The 

Greater  Tragedy 

and  Other  Things 


Beniamin  Apthorp  Gould 


j!  I 


The    Greater   Tragedy 

And  Other  Things 
By 

Benjamin  Apthorp  Gould 


G.  P.  Putnam's  Sons 

New  York  and   London 
fmicfcerbocfcer    press 
1916 


COPYRIGHT,  1916 

BY 
BENJAMIN  APTHORP  GOULD 


Ube  ftntcfterbocfcer  pree0, 


PREFACE 

MANY  of  us  believe  that  this  year  of 
1916  is  the  most  important  year  in 
the  history  of  the  United  States.  The  nation 
to-day  is  an  adult;  it  has  gone  successfully 
through  the  dangers  of  its  formative  period 
and  growth;  it  has  taken  its  place  as  an  im- 
portant member  of  the  society  of  nations. 
The  war-turmoil  of  the  times  makes  it  im- 
possible for  us  longer  to  delay  making  choice 
of  the  direction  of  our  future  development, 
and  upon  our  decision  rests  not  only  our 
future  conditions  at  home  but  our  position 
in  the  world. 

It  is  now  for  us  to  say  whether  we  choose 
service  or  sloth;  whether  we  take  our 
possible  place  in  the  promotion  of  the  human 
race,  or  content  ourselves  with  enjoying  our 
inheritance  while  we  may;  whether  we  elect 
the  part  of  the  worker  or  of  the  drone.  We 
Hi 


359931 


iv  Preface 

can  do,  or  we  can  enjoy.  We  can  use  our 
strength  to  assume  responsibility,  or  we  can 
take  the  easy  profits  which  the  times  afford 
and  spend  them  on  luxury.  We  can  devote 
ourselves  to  ennobling  the  soul  of  our  nation 
or  to  pampering  its  body. 

It  would  now  be  futile  to  argue  that  as  a 
people  we  do  not  know  the  rights  and  wrongs 
of  the  war  or  the  necessity  for  our  physical 
safety  that  militant  autocracy  be  overthrown. 
Every  day  brings  added  proof  that  the  spo- 
radic instances  of  pro-Germanism  in  America 
are  either  the  result  of  ignorant  stupidity  or 
a  return  for  German  cash  cunningly  spent  in 
fomenting  dissension  among  us.  If  any 
American  picks  up  this  book  and  questions 
on  'which  side  lie  both  the  interests  and  the 
duty  of  the  United  States,  let  him  throw  it 
aside.  I  am  not  writing  for  fools. 

The  elections  of  1916  are  to  demonstrate 
whether  my  country  has  lost  its  soul.  The 
Wilson  Administration  has  from  the  begin- 
ning of  the  war  stood  for  national  selfishness. 
It  has  shirked  service,  it  has  dodged  danger, 


Preface  v 

it  has  sought  money  and  chances  to  make 
more  money.  Its  phrases  of  high  purpose 
have  been  shown  to  be  a  diarrhea  of  empty 
words. 

If  anything  in  this  book  shall  help  a  single 
American  to  realize  these  facts  and  to  make  his 
choice  in  support  of  the  ideals  which  inspired 
our  ancestors  and  against  the  gross  selfish- 
ness which  is  our  present  danger,  I  shall 
feel  that  it  has  not  been  written  in  vain. 

B.  A.  G. 

February,  1916. 


CONTENTS 

PAGE 

PREFACE        ......  iii 

THE  SEASONS i 

THE  GREATER  TRAGEDY         ...  4 

THE  LUSITANIA n 

IDEALISM  AND  EVOLUTION      ...  20 

HAS  GERMANY  WANTED  AMERICA  IN  THE 

WAR? 23 

THE  WAR  AGAINST  WAR       .         .         .37 

OSHKOSH  COUNTY  AND  FLANDERS  .         .  47 

RESPONSIBILITY,  METHODS,  PURPOSE      .  54 

SIR  EDWARD  GREY  61 

THE  SOUL  OF  MY  COUNTRY  ...  65 

NEUTRALITY 72 

THE  AMERICAN  LEGION          ...  87 

OUR  NATIONAL  CONSCIENCE  ...  95 

PEACE  WITH  THE  GERMAN  REPUBLIC      .  99 


viii  Contents 


PAGE 


CANADIAN  FRIENDSHIP  .         .         .         .106 

J'AccusE 109 

THE  HYPHENATE 131 

MACHINES 139 

ISOLATION 151 

AT  THE  END 166 

THE  Two  NATIONS        .         .         .         .176 


The  Greater  Tragedy 


The  Greater  Tragedy 


THE  SEASONS 

DAISIES  pied  and  gay,  clover  lush  and  sweet 

again, 

And  the  lazy  blueness  of  the  dome  of  high  July, 
Pine  woods  tall  and  cool  where  the  raucous 

ravens  meet  again, 
Trysting  at  the  twilight  athwart  the  paling 

sky;— 
But  Belgium,  my  Belgium,  lies  wounded  unto 

death, 
The  belfry  of  Bruges  stands  stark  against  the 

sky, 

Bells  of  Bruges  calling  where  no  man  answereth 
Save  the  whispers  of  the  dead  who  taught  men 
how  to  die. 

Sumac  red  and  brave,  scarlet  berries  glistening 
Where  the  mountain  ash  yearns  for  the  parting 

sun, 
Harvest  stooked  and  furrow  turned,  autumn 

blossoms  listening 

For  the  keen  wind  of  the  north  to  say  their 
day  is  done; — 


2  The  Seasons 


But  Belgium,  my  Belgium,  hath  no  words  to 

say  her  sorrow, 
No  voice  to  moan  her  misery,  no  sob  to  ease 

her  pain, 
Prone  she  lies  and  bleeding,  and  the  coming  of 

the  morrow 

May  only  wake  her  conscious  to  her  suffering 
again. 

White,  white,  white  the  snow-banks  lie  a-shivering 
While  the  breezes  spin  the  flakes  that  whirl 

and  sink  to  rest, 

Black,  black,  black  the  ringing  ice  a-quivering, 
To  the  stroke  of  skate  that  skims  across  its 

shining  breast ; — 
But  Belgium,  my  Belgium,  lies  ruined,  racked, 

and  rent, 
Lou  vain  is  dust  and  ashes  and  Brussels  sick 

with  shame, 

The  tyrant  tramples  on  Lie*ge,  and  red  with  life- 
blood  spent 

Lies  Ypres  among  her  ruins,  the  shadow  of  a 
name. 

Grass  green  and  sweet,  when  the  Spring  caresses  it, 

Fleecy  clouds  and  white,  a-drifting  o'er  the  hill, 

The  meadow  rich  with  gold  where  the  mustard 

dresses  it, 

Carols  from  the  heavens  where  the  lark  hangs 
still;— 


The  Seasons  3 

And  Belgium,  my  Belgium,  again  shall  leap  to 

life, 
And  the  hearts  of  men  be  greatened  by  the 

martyrdom  she  bore, 
Faith  and  Honor  triumph,  and  to  justify  the 

strife 

The  beacon  of  her  shining  soul  be  darkened 
nevermore. 

Summers,  winters,  springs,  the  fadings  and  the 

burgeonings, 
Tempest   from    the   northland   and    breezes 

from  the  plain, 

And  Belgium,  my  Belgium,  our  hope  and  inspira- 
tion, 

My  Belgium  proud  and  sorrowing,  my  Belgium 
and  her  slain. 


THE  GREATER  TRAGEDY 

IV  A  ANY  are  the  tragedies  engendered  of 
*  this   war,  some   noble,  some    sordid, 

some  ghastly,  some  inspiring.  The  total  of 
misery  and  suffering  and  unhappiness  which 
it  has  caused  is  greater  than  that  brought 
about  by  any  occurrence  in  the  history  of 
mankind.  Such  huge  events,  such  over- 
whelming importancies,  must  breed  over- 
powering emotions  and  bear  fruit  in  "many 
a  noble  deed  and  many  a  base."  Courage 
and  self-sacrifice  and  steadfastness  have 
gone  side  by  side  with  pain  and  agony  and 
suffering;  a  splendid  cheerfulness  under  ad- 
versity has  matched  the  sorrow  that  knows 
no  ending;  generosity  and  unselfishness  have 
put  rapine  and  greed  to  shame. 

Many  have  been  the  tragedies  that  have 
affected  a  man,  a  family,  or  a  regiment,  that 
have  been  written  around  individual  names 
4 


The  Greater  Tragedy  5 

and  particular  villages.  But  there  has  been 
one  tragedy  greater  than  all  the  others,  more 
terrible,  more  pregnant  with  meaning  for 
mankind;  one  tragedy  that  were  it  to  remain 
unsolved  and  uncorrected  would  threaten 
the  future  progress  of  the  world;  one  tragedy 
that  affects  a  whole  race  and  is  the  burden 
of  a  whole  nation,  a  whole  language,  and  a 
whole  system  of  civilization.  The  name 
of  this  tragedy  is  Germany. 

Like  a  huge  and  malignant  growth  that 
has  sapped  the  life-blood  of  the  country, 
some  evil  thing  has  fed  upon  the  nation  until 
it  has  destroyed  honor  and  truth  and  right- 
eousness and  pity  and  all  sense  of  the  dignity 
of  man  and  his  place  in  the  universe.  The 
corruption  has  spread  until  it  has  infected 
nearly  the  whole  people;  hate  seems  to  be 
the  portion  of  everyone,  and  bitterness  and 
falsity  are  rampant  throughout  the  land. 

The  pity  of  it,  oh,  the  pity  of  it!  In  all 
that  great  and  learned  empire  there  has  not 
been  one  man  to  raise  his  voice  on  high  to  cry 
shame  on  the  hypocrites  and  blasphemers. 


6  The  Greater  Tragedy 

There  has  not  been  one  prophet  to  look  into 
the  future  and  foretell  the  disaster  and  de- 
gradation that  is  coming  to  the  nation  and  to 
bid  the  people  turn  aside  while  yet  there  was 
time.  There  has  not  been  one  seer  to  know 
that  the  wages  of  hate  is  death  and  sound 
the  alarm  before  it  was  too  late.  There  has 
not  been  one  patriot  who  dared  risk  the 
punishment  of  the  tyrant  and  seek  to  awaken 
the  drugged  conscience  of  the  people  that 
the  country  might  be  saved  from  the  ruin 
and  perdition  which  it  is  bringing  upon  itself. 
There  has  not  been  a  single  echo  from  that 
nobler  land  that  brought  forth  Goethe  and 
Schiller  and  Heine,  from  the  land  of  the  folk- 
song and  the  Niebelungen  Lied.  The  Rhine 
still  flows  between  its  castled  hills,  but  those 
who  dwell  upon  its  banks  have  gone  more 
mad  than  when  they  listened  to  the  song  of 
the  Lorelei;  the  Black  Forest  still  clothes 
the  slopes  of  Baden,  but  the  gnomes  and 
kobolds  that  once  peopled  its  shades  have 
vanished  before  the  hideous  phantasmagoria 
that  the  madness  of  the  nation  has  evoked. 


The  Greater  Tragedy  7 

Nuremberg  still  stands,  but  the  halls  that 
once  rang  to  the  cheery  chorus  of  the  sala- 
mander now  resound  only  to  the  mutterings 
of  hate. 

Hate  and  madness,  and  madness  begotten 
of  hate!  Hate  that  has  poisoned  the  wells 
in  the  deserts  of  Africa;  hate  that  has  hurled 
from  the  inky  sky  death  and  destruction 
upon  the  unsuspecting  mother  and  the  inno- 
cent child.  Hate  that  has  drowned  hundreds 
from  the  stately  passenger  ship;  hate  that 
has  strewn  the  paths  of  the  deep  seaways 
with  the  lurking  mine.  Hate  that  has 
wrecked  the  noble  cathedrals  which  have 
stood  for  centuries  to  inspire  the  hearts  of 
men  with  their  beauty;  hate  that  has  driven 
the  fumes  of  pitiless  poisons  into  the  trenches 
where  living  breathing  men  have  gasped  and 
died  that  they  might  help  to  save  their  world 
from  the  unspeakable  pollution.  Hate  that 
has  ravished  the  nunnery  and  chopped  the 
hands  from  the  baby  and  the  breasts  from 
the  violated  maiden;  hate  that  has  burned 
and  pillaged  and  robbed  and  reeked  with 


8  The  Greater  Tragedy 

defenseless  blood.  Hate  and  madness,  and 
madness  begotten  of  hate ! 

Out  of  a  nation  of  nearly  seventy  millions 
of  people  there  has  not  been  one  man  to 
cry  them  nay.  The  Cities  of  the  Plain  are 
no  more;  Sodom  and  Gomorrah  are  dust  and 
ashes;  and  the  Germany  of  the  House  of 
Hohenzollern  shall  pass  away  and  be  but  a 
hissing  and  a  byword  to  men.  The  name 
of  Germany  shall  no  more  conjure  up  the 
strains  of  the  Pilgrims'  Chorus ;  it  shall  signify 
the  wreck  of  Louvain  and  the  murders  of 
Aerschot.  The  hideous  spawn  of  the  Krupp 
works  at  Essen  shall  token  Germany;  not 
the  beneficent  discoveries  of  Ehrlich  or  the 
clinic  of  Freiburg.  Hate  and  madness,  and 
madness  begotten  of  hate!  And  not  one 
voice  crying  in  the  wilderness,  and  none  to 
say,  "This  thou  shalt  not!"  and  "No  farther 
shalt  thougo!" 

It  is  truly  said  that  there  can  be  no  public 
opinion  where  there  is  no  right  of  expression, 
and  in  this  destruction  of  public  opinion  the 
nation  has  lost  its  soul.  Fifty  years  of  des- 


The  Greater  Tragedy  9 

potism,  of  bureaucracy,  of  militarism,  of  the 
divine  right  of  Hohenzollerns,  have  killed 
the  soul  of  the  nation;  Germany  is  a  fright- 
ful machine,  a  thing  of  wheels  and  cogs  and 
pistons,  an  automaton,  cruel,  cold  and  crush- 
ing, conscienceless.  Such  a  creation  can  never 
continue  to  operate;  it  may  exist  for  a  day 
or  a  year  or  the  best  part  of  a  century ;  but 
the  time  shall  surely  come,  as  it  is  now  com- 
ing to  Germany,  when  something  shall  event- 
uate that  the  mind  of  the  inventor  failed  to 
foresee,  and  then  by  its  very  might  shall  the 
whirling  metal  be  utterly  destroyed.  The 
whole  is  greater  than  the  part,  and  man  is 
greater  than  his  greatest  invention;  in  this 
lies  the  hope  of  the  world  and  the  certain 
fate  of  Germany. 

!  Hate  and  madness,  and  madness  begotten 
of  hate !  Not  a  man  to  arise  as  a  prophet  and 
a  seer,  neither  out  of  the  cities  nor  from  the 
plowed  fields!  Not  one  to  dare  and  if  need 
be  to  die  for  the  sake  of  his  own  soul  and  the 
soul  of  his  country ;  not  a  saint,  not  a  martyr. 
Nearly  seventy  millions  of  people,  and  not 


io          The  Greater  Tragedy 

one  man;  nothing  but  wheels  and  cogs  and 
the  unseeing,  unthinking,  unpitying  beat 
of  the  pistons  of  steel. 

Tragedy?  There  has  never  been  such  a 
tragedy  since  first  out  of  chaos  cosmos  began 
to  evolve.  Tragedy?  There  has  never 
issued  from  the  mouths  of  men  a  word  so 
tragic  as  the  name  of  Germany. 


THE  LUSITANIA 

A  T  this  writing,  nearly  nine  months  have 
**  passed  since  the  crime  of  the  Lusitania, 
and  the  President  of  the  United  States  still 
invites  the  Ambassador  of  Kultur  to  dinner. 
It  is  hard  to  say  on  which  nation  the  shame 
lies  heaviest, — on  Germany,  which  at  least 
had  a  purpose  in  its  barbarism,  or  on  America 
which  had  to  fear  only  the  pains  and  tribu- 
lations without  the  actual  dangers  of  war. 
How  impossible  the  continued  relationship 
seemed  to  one  brought  up  in  the  conception 
of  the  dignity  and  duty  of  America  handed 
down  by  our  ancestors  appears  from  the 
following  review  of  the  situation  written  at 
the  time  of  the  first  German  answer  of  the 
Lusitania  series.  It  is  useful  to  note  how 
nothing  has  occurred  to  avoid  the  conclusion 
which  then  seemed  unavoidable  except  a 

willingness  on  the  part  of  our  President  to 

ii 


12  The  Lusitania 

submit  to  insult  and  to  accept  injury  which 
would  then  have  appeared  to  us  inconceiv- 
able. 

"Words,"  says  Talleyrand,  "are  a  means  by 
which  thoughts  may  be  concealed,"  or  something 
to  that  effect.  The  German  State  Department 
evidently  fails  to  appreciate  that  the  American 
note  in  regard  to  the  Lusitania  means  exactly 
what  it  says,  and  that  there  is  a  nation  of  a  hun- 
dred millions  of  people  with  resources  of  about 
a  hundred  and  seventy-five  billions  of  dollars 
worth  of  property  determined  and  prepared  to 
back  up  the  meaning  of  the  note.  Cannot  Von 
Jagow  comprehend  that  a  diplomatic  communi- 
cation can  say  what  it  means  or  mean  what  it 
says?  If  not,  it  may  well  be  that  he  is  about  to 
have  a  very  unpleasant  awakening. 

At  the  time  of  writing  [June,  1915],  Mr. 
Wilson's  reply  to  the  latest  German  answer  has 
not  been  made  public,  but  it  is  impossible  to 
imagine  that  the  United  States  will  recede  from 
the  position  already  taken.  We  Americans 
assuredly  will  not  submit  to  having  our  vessels 
torpedoed  as  often  as  Germany  sees  fit  to  do  so, 
and  then  be  content  to  arbitrate  as  to  the  money 
value  of  them,  and  of  the  American  lives  lost 
in  them,  in  order  to  receive  Germany's  promise 
to  pay.  Money  cannot  pay  for  lives  lost  or 
national  dignity  wantonly  insulted.  Also,  Ger- 


The  Lusitania  13 

many's  promises  are  at  present  quoted  quite  a 
bit  below  par.  Vide  Belgium. 

So  far  as  the  Lusitania  is  concerned  Germany's 
reply  is  quibble  and  evasion.  The  fact  that 
the  British  Admiralty  might  have  used  her  as  an 
auxiliary  cruiser  does  not  alter  the  fact  that  she 
was  not  so  used,  but  was  a  passenger  vessel 
running  upon  an  announced  schedule.  This  is 
a  very  different  matter  from  the  activities  of 
auxiliary  cruisers  like  the  Eitel  Fritz  or  the 
Kronprinz,  the  business  of  which  is  not  the 
carrying  of  passengers  and  cargo  for  pay,  but  the 
destruction  of  hostile  commerce.  As  a  matter 
of  fact  the  Lusitania  was  not  armed,  but  she  had 
a  perfect  right  to  be  armed,  and  such  armament 
would  in  no  way  have  prejudiced  the  rights  of 
her  passengers  so  long  as  it  was  used  only  for 
purposes  of  defense  against  an  attacking  enemy. 

Germany  complains  that  the  Lusitania  was 
not  "undefended."  As  a  matter  of  fact,  she 
was  entirely  undefended,  more  is  the  pity,  but 
it  cannot  affect  the  illegality  of  her  destruction 
in  any  way.  The  right  of  self-defense  is  of  all 
rights  inherent  in  mankind  the  most  funda- 
mental, and  killing  in  self-defense  has  since  the 
inception  of  law  been  recognized  as  permissible 
and  in  no  sense  criminal. 

The  German  Government  apparently  feels 
that  the  endeavors  of  merchant  ships  to  escape 
destruction  by  running  away  is  also  most  repre- 


14  The  Lusitania 

hensible.  Ought  they  not  to  welcome  such  a 
message  from  the  home  of  Kultur  as  a  torpedo, 
and  gladly  sink  to  prove  the  efficacy  of  the 
Prussian  submarines?  Is  not  the  fact  that  they 
would  gladly  turn  tail  and  put  on  all  possible 
speed  a  clear  justification  for  torpedoing  them 
before  they  know  that  the  submarine  is  there? 
Otherwise  they  might  save  their  crews  and  their 
cargoes,  to  the  painful  damage  of  true  Kultur. 

The  predominating  idea  in  the  German  posi- 
tion is  that  the  illegal  methods  and  the  inciden- 
tal injury  to  neutrals  are  necessary  if  the 
German  submarine  campaign  is  to  be  successful, 
and  that,  therefore,  we  have  no  right  to  com- 
plain. We  ought  to  be  willing  to  endure  these 
injuries  if  the  German  cause  is  to  be  helped!  It 
is  unjust  to  ask  a  pirate  to  desist  from  his  piracy, 
because  thereby  one  of  his  most  profitable 
sources  of  revenue  would  be  cut  off ! 

We  entirely  and  unconditionally  agree  with 
Germany  that  if  her  long-distance  submarine 
warfare  is  to  be  effective  to  any  appreciable 
degree  it  will  be  necessary  to  sink  vessels  at 
sight  regardless  of  the  safety  of  non-combatant 
crews  and  passengers.  It  may  also  occasionally 
lead  to  destruction  of  neutral  vessels.  But  we 
do  not  and  we  will  not  admit  that  this  is  any 
reason  why  Germany  should  be  allowed  to  con- 
tinue such  warfare.  We  maintain  that  Ger- 
many must  give  up  her  use  of  submarines  against 


The  Lusitania  15 

commerce  because  of  the  practical  impossibility 
of  using  them  without  interfering  with  the  rights 
of  neutrals  and  the  rights  of  humanity.  This 
makes  the  question  at  issue  between  Germany 
and  America  clear  and  definite.  Von  Jagow 
himself  admits  that  the  German  methods  are 
illegal  when  he  says:  "German  commanders  con- 
sequently are  no  longer  able  to  observe  the 
customary  regulations  of  the  prize  law,  which 
they  before  always  followed."  In  other  words, 
Germany  pleads  guilty  with  a  naive  nonchalance 
quite  new  in  diplomatic  correspondence,  and 
with  a  shamelessness  that  is  amazing. 

It  seems,  therefore,  that  one  of  three  things 
must  result:  America  must  back  down,  Germany 
must  back  down,  or  there  must  be  a  breach  of 
relations  between  the  two  countries.  The  first 
of  these  is  inconceivable;  we  Americans  who  are 
of  the  same  blood  and  tradition  as  those  who 
have  created  the  nation  know  that  America 
could  not  be  what  America  is  if  such  a  thing 
were  possible.  The  second  is  highly  improb- 
able; Germany  has  fed  up  her  home  population 
too  consistently  on  tales  of  German  submarine 
prowess  to  dare  to  abandon  the  use  of  them 
except  against  vessels  of  war.  The  third  event- 
uation  is  apparently  unavoidable. 

It  remains  to  be  seen  whether  American  diplo- 
macy will  be  able  to  steer  clear  of  actual  hos- 
tilities. Even  if  successful  in  doing  so  and  if  the 


1 6  The  Lusitania 

differences  between  the  nations  be  confined  to 
a  cessation  of  diplomatic  relations,  it  is  evident 
that  the  unified  American  sentiment  against 
Germany  will  be  of  the  utmost  value  to  the 
Allies.  It  will  mean  a  solidarity  of  national  en- 
deavor to  assist  which  will  multiply  the  produc- 
tion of  munitions,  and  be  of  enormous  value  in 
shortening  the  length  of  Germany's  possible 
resistance.  The  worst  day's  work  for  the  Ger- 
man cause  since  the  outbreak  of  the  war  was 
the  sinking  of  the  Lusitania. 

It  is  most  interesting  to  note  reports  that  both 
Switzerland  and  Holland  have  sent  protests  to 
Germany  following  closely  the  attitude  of  the 
American  note.  This  action  shows  splendid 
courage  on  the  part  of  these  two  nations,  for 
while  Germany  under  present  conditions  is  abso- 
lutely impotent  against  the  United  States,  she 
is  far  from  impotent  against  either  of  them, 
lying  as  they  do  on  the  German  frontier.  If  the 
outcome  shall  be  to  bring  them  into  the  war, 
the  result  may  be  of  vast  importance,  as  Holland 
especially  offers  an  opportunity  for  the  allied 
armies  to  strike  Germany  at  a  very  vulnerable 
spot.  Not  only  have  these  two  countries  very 
considerable  trained  forces,  but  their  geography 
would  make  their  armies  of  exceptional  value. 
If  the  action  of  the  United  States  shall  pilot  the 
Swiss  and  the  Dutch  into  war  on  the  side  of 
humanity  and  civilization,  the  direct  immediate 


• 
The  Lusitania  17 

result  may  be  of  even  more  help  than  what  we 
can  ourselves  do  before  we  have  time  to  create 
great  armies  and  equipment. 

Alas,  Von  Jagow  and  Talleyrand  knew 
better  than  we  that  our  Administration  did 
not  mean  what  it  said,  and  that  like  a  hungry 
dog  it  would  be  satisfied  with  a  pat  on  the 
head  and  a  bone  tossed  to  it  to  gnaw.  A 
few  kind  words  and  a  bow,  and  Mr.  Wilson 
not  only  was  willing  to  let  the  Lusitania 
matter  drag  on  from  month  to  weary  month, 
but  stored  away  in  the  same  pigeon-hole  the 
Arabic,  the  Hesperian,  theAncona,  the  Persia, 
and  the  others  of  that  shameful  catalogue. 
"I  did  not  kill  the  Ancona,"  says  Germany; 
" Austria  did  that;  she  did  not  know  that 
you  minded;  you  had  better  write  to  her  as 
you  did  to  me,  so  that  she  too  may  know 
how  you  feel  about  it."  "I  did  not  shoot 
the  Persia,"  says  Austria,  "but  perhaps  it 
was  Turkey.  Turkey  does  not  read  very 
easily  and  has  but  few  newspapers;  it  will 
probably  be  a  surprise  to  her  to  learn  that 


i8  The  Lusitania 

you  do  not  like  it.  Why  not  have  Mr. 
Morgenthau  tell  her  about  it?" 

Everybody  knows  that  the  Teutonic  Alli- 
ance is  one  in  making  war,  and  that  it  is 
mocking  at  our  blind  if  tempered  and  un- 
productive wrath.  We  can  imagine  the 
German  diplomats  laughing  at  the  way  they 
are  dodging  round  the  bush  and  the  ease  with 
which  they  hoodwink  us. 

So  Mr.  Wilson,  having  got  nowhere  with 
Germany,  turns  his  fountain-pen  loose  on 
Great  Britain,  keeping  one  eye  all  the  while 
carefully  cocked  on  the  Middle  West.  Ger- 
many knows  that  Wilson  will  not  fight,  but 
will  swallow  anything  except  his  own  ink. 
Wilson  knows  that  serious  trouble  with 
Great  Britain  is  out  of  the  question,  both 
because  the  differences  between  the  nations 
are  comparatively  trivial  and  because  the 
aims  of  the  two  great  English-speaking  demo- 
cracies are  the  same.  It  is  therefore  perfectly 
safe  to  yap  at  England,  and  may  be  more 
satisfying  to  the  Middle  West  than  the  sneers 
and  mockery  with  which  Germany  retorts. 


The  Lusitania  19 

Meanwhile  the  tides  flow  over  the  hulk 
of  the  Lusitania,  and  the  bones  of  our  mur- 
dered flesh  and  blood  are  whitening  on  the 
ocean  bed  unavenged  and  unatoned.  Our 
citizens  who  go  abroad  must  look  to  the 
guardianship  of  Great  Britain  for  their 
safety,  not  to  the  faded  glories  of  the  Stars 
and  Stripes  or  the  weight  of  a  passport  from 
Washington.  How  long,  men  of  America, 
will  you  put  up  with  these  things? 


IDEALISM  AND  EVOLUTION 

HPHERE  used  to  be  a  great  deal  of  loose 
*  talk  about  President  Wilson  being  an 
idealist  because  he  wished  to  avoid  the  hor- 
rors of  war.  I  am  thankful  that  to  me  ideal- 
ism has  a  much  higher  meaning,  and  signifies 
a  willingness  to  undertake  rather  than  to 
avoid.  Peace  is  unquestionably  a  high  ideal, 
but  only  when  it  can  be  accomplished  with- 
out the  sacrifice  of  what  is  more  important 
and  more  inspiring  than  peace  itself.  An 
unworthy  peace  may  be  ignoble  and  degrad- 
ing; it  may  be  due  to  cowardice,  to  selfish- 
ness, to  sordidness,  or  to  lack  of  vision  to 
appreciate  the  essential  demands  of  civiliza- 
tion. 

The  most  important  thing  in  the  world  is 
life,  but  not  my  life  or  your  life  or  the  lives  of 
a  million  men.  The  purposes  of  the  universe 
are  being  worked  out  by  an  orderly  and  con- 

20 


Idealism  and  Evolution        21 

tinned  evolution,  and  this  evolution  demands 
that  the  conditions  of  human  life  be  such  as 
to  permit  that  steady  progress  essential  to 
the  steady  development  of  life.  When  it 
becomes  needful  to  sacrifice  your  life  and  my 
life  and  the  lives  of  a  million  men  for  the 
good  of  human  life  as  a  whole,  a  true  idealism 
demands  that  the  lesser  be  sacrificed  to  the 
greater. 

I  am  entirely  convinced  that  the  orderly 
evolution  of  mankind  would  be  seriously 
retarded  by  the  physical  success  of  the 
German  Philosophy  of  Force.  Evolution  has 
already  advanced  to  a  point  where  mankind 
is  able  itself  to  recognize  the  laws  under 
which  it  is  taking  place,  and  to  a  great  extent 
is  able  to  guide  its  own  development  instead 
of  having  to  trust  to  blind  and  instinctive 
selection  as  in  the  earlier  stages  of  develop- 
ment. Such  appreciation  of  the  laws  of  the 
universe  carries  with  it  responsibility  to  give 
these  laws  full  opportunity  of  action. 

To  me,  therefore,  a  true  idealism  requires 
that  humankind  recognize  the  danger  to  its 


22         Idealism  and  Evolution 

progress  in  the  German  Kultur,  and  neces- 
sitates a  willingness  on  the  part  of  all  civi- 
lized peoples  to  make  whatever  sacrifices  of 
my  life  or  your  life  or  the  lives  of  millions 
of  men  may  be  needed  to  restore  to  the  world 
its  opportunity  for  orderly  development. 
The  duty  is  not  one  pertaining  to  a  nation 
but  to  a  civilization,  and  nationality  is  of 
importance  only  in  offering  the  units  through 
which  this  duty  can  be  performed.  It  fol- 
lows that  I  do  not  consider  this  war  one 
between  nations  but  between  incompatible 
systems,  between  progressive  civilization 
and  reaction  towards  barbarism.  In  such 
a  struggle  the  selfish  interests  of  the  people 
of  any  nation  are  nothing  in  comparison  with 
the  interests  of  humanity  as  a  whole,  and 
the  obligation  rests  upon  enlightened  under- 
standing wherever  it  exist  in  the  world. 

It  follows  that  my  idealism  is  as  different 
from  the  idealism  of  President  Wilson  as 
black  is  from  white.  I  assuredly  would  not 
exchange  with  him. 


HAS  GERMANY  WANTED  AMERICA 
IN  THE   WAR? 

HAS  Germany  tried  to  provoke  the  United 
States  into  declaring  war?  Many 
things  point  to  this  conclusion.  It  may  be 
well  to  consider  what  would  be  the  effects  of 
the  existence  of  such  a  state  of  war  to  help 
in  judging  as  to  whether  Germany's  insults 
have  been  premeditated  and  intended  to 
cause  war. 

We  must  all  admit  that  the  immediate 
military  effect  of  the  entrance  of  the  United 
States  into  the  war  would  be  of  no  impor- 
tance. So  far  as  armies  go,  the  United  States 
is  practically  without  any,  and,  however 
vast  the  possibilities  of  creating  them  may 
be,  it  would  be  a  matter  of  many  months  to 
organize,  equip,  and  transport  them  to  the 
European  terrain.  There  is  every  probability 
that  before  this  could  be  accomplished  the 
23 


24         Has  Germany  Wanted 

war  will  have  ended.  So  far  as  the  navy  is 
concerned,  the  preponderance  of  the  allied 
fleets  is  already  so  great  as  to  prevent  any- 
thing except  sporadic  activities  on  the  part 
of  the  German  navy,  and  the  presence  of 
the  American  ships  would  not  in  any  way 
alter  the  existing  naval  conditions.  The 
only  marine  offense  of  which  Germany  is 
capable  is  the  secret  assassin  blow  of  the 
submarine,  and  additional  warships  could 
do  little  to  mitigate  this  form  of  attack.  The 
entrance  of  the  United  States  into  the  war 
would  therefore  fail  to  increase  the  military 
pressure  upon  Germany  to  any  marked  extent 
within  the  probable  duration  of  the  war. 

It  is  notorious  that  the  stocks  of  military 
munitions  and  supplies  in  the  possession  of 
the  American  Government  are  at  present 
negligible  in  amount.  It  may  be  quite  pos- 
sible that  Germany  thinks  that  belligerency 
on  the  part  of  the  United  States  would  cause 
the  munitions  now  being  manufactured  in 
America  to  be  commandeered  by  the  govern- 
ment and  diverted  from  immediate  delivery 


America  in  the  War?          25 

to  Great  Britain,  France,  and  Russia,  thus 
actually  weakening  the  present  attack  upon 
Germany.  I  cannot  believe  that  this  argu- 
ment is  sound,  as  we  are  intelligent  enough 
to  understand  cooperation  and  to  use  our 
resources  where  they  will  do  the  most  good. 
But  none  the  less  it  is  quite  conceivable  that 
this  idea  may  be  influencing  Germany. 

Berlin  still  seems  unable  to  understand 
that  the  doctrine  of  frightfulness  will  not 
work  upon  Anglo-Saxons,  and  that  when 
horrors  hitherto  unknown  are  perpetrated 
against  us  we  do  not  drop  on  our  knees  and 
pray  for  mercy  but  only  fight  the  harder. 
It  may  be  that  German  emissaries  in  America 
have  laid  plots  for  the  destruction  of  pro- 
perty and  lives  with  the  expectation  that  the 
United  States  will  be  glad  to  buy  immun- 
ity along  with  the  nations  of  Europe  if  the 
German  arms  are  successful.  The  taste  of 
the  indemnity  wrung  from  France  in  1871 
is  still  smacking  very  sweet  to  German 
palates,  and  the  amount  of  ransom  which 
America  could  pay  if  America  could  be  made 


26         Has  Germany  Wanted 

to  pay  would  be  very  luscious.  Even  if 
Germany  should  win  in  Europe,  Europe  will 
be  almost  bankrupt,  and  the  solvency  of 
America  would  be  very  pleasant  if  Germany 
could  force  her  to  become  a  debtor. 

Another  suggestion  is  that  Germany  still 
believes  that  she  is  going  to  be  victorious, 
and  sees  only  in  the  United  States  a  danger- 
ous commercial  competitor  in  the  years  after 
the  war.  It  is  possible  that  some^  Germans 
think  that  if  America  enters  the  war  it  will 
result  in  our  commercial  ruin,  and  that  the 
end  of  the  conflict  will  show  a  dominant 
Germany  supreme  in  both  arms  and  com- 
merce over  a  world  beaten  in  war  and 
exhausted  by  debt  and  ransom. 

It  appears  to  me,  however,  much  more 
probable  that  the  leading  men  in  Germany 
recognize  the  fact  that  ultimate  defeat  is 
certain,  and  that  they  are  already  taking 
steps  both  to  save  their  faces,  and  to  make 
the  blow  to  German  pride  as  light  as  possible 
and  to  obtain  as  easy  terms  of  settlement  as 
they  can.  As  to  the  former,  the  more  nations 


America  in  the  War?          27 

there  are  ranged  against  them,  the  less  will 
be  the  disgrace  from  their  point  of  view  in 
being  forced  to  yield.  But  much  more  im- 
portant will  be  the  restraining  influence  of 
America  at  the  time  of  settlement.  Should 
the  United  States  not  join  in  the  war,  Ameri- 
can influence  at  the  close  of  the  war  will  be 
quite  unimportant,  and  Germany  will  have 
to  meet  the  demands  of  her  European  foes 
embittered  by  the  length  and  costliness  of 
the  struggle,  each  with  selfish  interests  to 
serve  in  addition  to  their  underlying  and 
altruistic  purpose  of  ridding  the  world  of 
Prussian  militarism.  If,  on  the  contrary, 
the  United  States  is  entitled  from  participa- 
tion in  the  war  to  take  an  active  part  in  the 
making  of  peace,  she  will  be  the  one  Power 
without  any  national  axes  to  grind  at  Ger- 
many's expense,  and  the  tendency  of  her 
trans-Atlantic  statecraft  will  be  to  incline 
toward  greater  temperance  in  demands  than 
the  European  nations  who  will  have  suffered 
so  much  more  bitterly.  It  has  always  been 
characteristic  of  Anglo-Saxons  not  to  kick 


28         Has  Germany  Wanted 

a  man  when  he  is  down,  but  rather  to  lend 
him  a  helping  hand  to  rise  again,  and  this 
generosity  to  the  vanquished  was  never 
shown  in  more  striking  fashion  than  by  the 
American  magnanimity  to  Spain  at  the  end 
of  the  Spanish  War.  We  beat  her,  we  as- 
sumed responsibility  for  colonies  which  had 
proved  a  costly  burden  to  her,  and  then  paid 
her  a  large  sum  of  money  for  them.  Ger- 
many might  very  well  like  to  have  the  result 
of  her  defeat  as  fortunate  for  her.  It  is  also 
quite  possible  that  Germany  believes  that 
American  hatred  of  war  would  cause  her 
influence  to  be  exercised  to  end  the  war  be- 
fore its  great  purposes  have  been  finally 
accomplished. 

From  the  foregoing  considerations  it  is 
clear  that  it  is  quite  possible  that  Germany 
may  think  that  she  has  something  to  gain 
and  nothing  to  lose  from  American  belliger- 
ency against  her.  She  has  absolutely  failed 
in  her  other  endeavors  to  use  the  United 
States.  At  the  beginning  of  the  war  she 
attempted  to  utilize  the  large  number  of 


America  in  the  War?          29 

American  citizens  of  German  origin  to  create 
a  feeling  of  sympathy  for  her  cause  and  to 
win  the  great  assistance  that  such  partisan- 
ship would  have  brought  her.  This  attempt 
was  almost  immediately  shown  to  be  hope- 
less, and  the  American  people  made  it  clear 
that  they  were  too  intelligent  to  be  deceived 
about  the  meaning  of  the  war  and  that  their 
sympathies  and  individual  help  had  to  go 
out  to  the  cause  of  democracy  and  to  be 
against  absolutism.  Berlin  then  tried  to 
use  these  German-Americans  as  a  political 
club,  and  by  threats  of  their  voting  power  to 
force  an  unneutral  favoritism.  This  insolent 
and  meddlesome  endeavor  not  only  proved 
futile  but  reacted  against  its  organizers, 
as  was  shown  among  other  things  by  the 
Chicago  mayoralty  election.  The  next  Ger- 
man move  was  to  try  to  cause  friction  be- 
tween the  United  States  and  the  Entente 
Powers,  especially  Great  Britain,  and  to 
arouse  a  feeling  that  American  commercial 
rights  were  being  infringed.  It  soon  became 
evident,  however,  that  the  United  States 


30         Has  Germany  Wanted 

realized  that  England  would  do  nothing 
to  endanger  American  lives,  that  only 
American  property  interests  were  involved, 
and  that  England  was  both  able  and  willing 
to  make  financial  amends  for  any  financial 
losses  caused  by  her  acts  if  they  were  found 
to  exceed  the  limitations  of  international 
law.  The  futility  of  trying  to  cause  trouble 
between  the  United  States  and  the  Entente 
Powers  has  become  apparent. 

Since  then  Germany  seems  to  have  under- 
taken a  series  of  studied  insults  to  the  United 
States,  some  of  them  verbal,  but  most  of 
them  expressed  by  bombs  and  torpedoes. 
They  began  with  the  notification  of  the 
establishment  of  the  German  "War  Zone" 
around  Great  Britain,  seemingly  an  attempt 
to  establish  a  blockade  without  making  it 
effective,  a  thing  up  to  that  time  'recognized 
as  outside  the  sanction  of  international  law. 
The  neutral  most  affected  by  this  illegal 
procedure  was  of  course  the  United  States. 
It  is  noteworthy  in  this  regard  that  the  Brit- 
ish blockade  of  German  ports,  although  on 


America  in  the  War?         31 

account  of  changed  conditions  of  marine 
warfare  conducted  in  a  different  manner  from 
blockades  in  earlier  wars,  retains  the  essen- 
tial quality  of  effectiveness.  It  is  its  very 
effectiveness  which  is  the  corner-stone  not 
only  of  its  legality  but  of  the  German  protests 
against  it. 

Next  came  the  ill-mannered  and  false 
accusation  of  Von  Bernstorff  that  the  United 
States  was  committing  a  breach  of  neutrality 
in  allowing  the  sale  of  munitions  by  its  citi- 
zens. This  was  of  course  puerile,  as  Von 
Bernstorff  himself  well  knew,  and  was  a 
thing  which  Germany  herself  had  repeatedly 
done  in  previous  wars  where  she  had  been 
neutral.  The  American  reply  was  a  digni- 
fied answer  to  this  peevishness,  carefully 
explaining  the  things  which  the  veriest 
tyro  in  diplomacy  is  supposed  to  know. 

Much  more  serious  than  these  vocal  in- 
sults have  been  the  acts  against  American 
lives  and  American  ships.  I  pass  over  the 
case  of  the  Clyde,  sunk  some  time  ago,  pay- 
ment for  which  has  been  promised,  and  also 


32         Has  Germany  Wanted 

the  cases  of  the  American  ships  Evelyn  and 
Caribj  sunk  by  floating  mines  in  the  North 
Sea,  responsibility  for  which  might  be  denied 
by  Germany.  But  it  is  impossible  for  Ger- 
many to  avoid  responsibility  in  the  cases 
of  the  Gulflight,  the  Gushing,  the  Falaba,  and 
the  Lusitania. 

The  technical  cases  of  the  Falaba  and  the 
Lusitania  are  much  the  same.  Each  was 
an  unarmed  British  passenger  liner  carrying 
American  passengers;  each  was  torpedoed 
and  sunk;  in  neither  case  was  provision  made 
for  the  safety  of  passengers ;  each  case  re- 
sulted in  the  loss  of  American  life.  The 
only  differences  were  that  no  warning  was 
given  the  Lusitania  while  insufficient  warning 
was  given  the  Falaba;  that  the  Falaba  was 
outward-bound  and  could  not  be  held  to  be 
carrying  contraband  to  England;  that  it  is 
possible  that  the  German  submarine  com- 
mander did  not  know  that  there  was  an 
American  on  the  Falaba,  whereas  Germany 
was  well  aware  that  the  Lusitania  carried 
many  American  passengers;  and  that  the 


America  in  the  War?         33 

loss  of  life  on  the  Lusitania  was  much  greater 
and  calculated  to  arouse  American  indigna- 
tion to  a  much  larger  extent.  Each  case 
was  an  intended  breach  of  the  recognized 
rule  of  international  law  that  unarmed  mer- 
chantmen of  a  belligerent,  while  subject  to 
stoppage,  search,  and  seizure,  may  only 
be  destroyed  if  after  capture  and  search  it 
prove  not  feasible  to  take  them  before  a 
prize  court,  and  then  only  when  the  safety 
of  all  non-combatants  on  them  has  been 
duly  secured. 

The  cases  of  the  Gushing  and  the  Gulflight 
are  from  a  technical  point  of  view  much  more 
serious  than  the  others,  as  they  were  Ameri- 
can ships  flying  the  American  flag,  the 
former  attacked  by  bombs  from  aeroplanes, 
which  fortunately  did  no  damage,  the  latter 
by  torpedo  from  a  submarine.  The  Gulflight 
was  destroyed  and  American  lives  lost.  This 
outrage  was  committed  in  broad  daylight, 
the  flag  being  clearly  in  view  and  the  name 
and  nationality  of  the  vessel  screaming  in 
huge  letters  from  her  sides. 


34         Has  Germany  Wanted 

It  seemed  inconceivable  to  us  Americans 
who  know,  love,  and  respect  our  country 
that  even  our  present  Administration  could 
evade  taking  definite  action.  Our  national 
self-respect  required  at  least  three  things; 
first,  an  apology  for  what  had  been  done; 
second,  reparation  so  far  as  payment  could 
atone  for  loss  of  life,  as  well  as  loss  of  property; 
third,  an  engagement  that  such  infringements 
of  the  rights  of  Americans  should  not  be 
repeated.  If  Germany  was  unwilling  to 
accede  to  these  demands  it  was  impossible 
to  see  how  friendly  relations  could  be  con- 
tinued between  the  two  countries. 

The  obligations  of  the  United  States  were 
manifold,  to  the  country  itself,  to  the  world 
of  which  it  forms  a  part,  to  the  present  time 
with  its  stress  and  suffering,  to  the  future 
years.  If  we  took  the  profits  of  greatness 
but  shirked  its  responsibilities,  we  should  be 
false  to  ourselves,  and  our  ignoble  selfishness 
would  mark  the  beginning  of  our  national 
degeneration ;  we  should  be  failing  our  world, 
to  the  progress  of  which  we  ought  to  devote 


America  in  the  War?         35 

our  enlightenment;  we  should  be  guilty  of 
permitting  in  this  war  the  sufferings  resultant 
from  barbarisms  unprecedented  in  history; 
and  for  the  future  we  should  be  condoning 
the  abolition  of  the  most  humane  of  the 
rules  of  international  law  which  provides 
for  the  safety  at  sea  of  neutrals  and  non- 
combatants. 

In  spite  of  the  many  evidences  that  Presi- 
dent Wilson  desired  to  maintain  peace  at 
almost  any  price,  we  Americans  of  sturdy 
stock  could  not  think  him  so  lacking  in 
vision  and  patriotic  regard  for  our  national 
dignity  as  to  hesitate,  delay,  and  shilly-shally. 
We  did  not  then  realize  the  impossibility 
of  getting  a  red-blooded  American  or  Anglo- 
Saxon  attitude  from  him.  It  was  only  when 
the  outrages  mentioned  above  were  fol- 
lowed by  others,  like  the  Arabic,  the  Hespe- 
rian, the  Ancona,  the  Petrolite,  and  the  Persia, 
to  speak  only  of  the  most  prominent,  and 
when  these  crimes  brought  forth  nothing 
more  than  interminable  sentences  and  a 
continuance  of  sordid  and  cowardly  watch- 


36  America  in  the  War  ? 

ful  waiting,  that  we  gave  up  hope  from  Wil- 
son. Our  answer  to  him  must  be  in 
November,  1916. 

Meantime  it  is  hard  to  know  whether 
Germany  understood  the  Wilson  psychology 
better  than  we  ourselves  and  knew  that  the 
only  price  she  would  have  to  pay  for  her 
crimes  against  us  was  the  price  of  paper  and 
ink,  or  whether  she  was  either  unconcerned 
as  to  whether  we  entered  the  war  or  anxious 
that  we  should  enter.  Not  even  war  can 
now  wipe  away  the  shameful  stain  of  the 
passive  acceptance  of  insult  after  repeated 
insult.  Mr.  Wilson  has  done  injury  to  our 
self-respect  and  our  manhood  which  is 
irreparable. 


THE  WAR  AGAINST  WAR 

'"THE  reason  why  ninety  out  of  every 
*  hundred  citizens  of  the  United  States 
are  in  full  sympathy  with  the  Entente  Powers 
is  psychologically  of  the  highest  importance. 
It  is  not  because  we  Americans  are  friends 
of  England,  Russia,  and  France  and  enemies 
of  Germany,  but  because  we  believe  that 
France,  Russia,  and  England  are  right  and 
Germany  is  eternally  wrong.  The  reason 
of  this  belief  is  not  founded  on  any  blood- 
relationship  with  England  in  that  the  major- 
ity of  us  come  of  British  stock.  Indeed, 
before  this  war  there  was  a  general  opposi- 
tion to  Great  Britain  among  the  mass  of  our 

people,  due  in  great  measure  to  the  fact  that 

j> 

within  our  historical  memory  England  stood 
for  what  Germany  to-day  represents,  the 
forcible  extension  of  boundaries  and  the 
seizure  of  colonies,  and  that  in  opposing 
37 


38        The  War  Against  War 

these  earlier  ambitions  we  had  ourselves 
come  into  conflict  with  her.  Broadly,  our 
sympathy  rests  upon  the  spiritual  relationship 
in  ideals,  ambitions,  and  inspirations  which 
binds  us  to  the  Entente  cause  and  most 
especially  to  France  and  England.  This 
spiritual  relationship  makes  the  endeavors 
of  German  agents  to  win  our  regard  and  to 
use  our  powers  of  assistance  entirely  hopeless. 
Underlying  this  sympathy,  and  largely 
the  cause  of  it,  is  the  belief  which  we  firmly 
hold,  although  in  most  of  our  minds  it  may 
not  be  clearly  defined,  that  the  allied  nations 
are  fighting  for  peace,  and  that  Germany  is 
fighting  for  war.  Of  all  the  great  nations 
of  to-day,  in  Germany  alone  has  war  for  war's 
sake  been  glorified;  in  Germany  alone  has 
a  military  caste  been  established  as  superior 
to  all  other  members  of  the  nation;  in  Ger- 
many alone  has  the  foul  philosophy  of 
Nietzsche,  Treitschke,  and  Bernhardi  borne 
fruit.  Therefore,  if  war  as  a  noble  and  glorious 
institution  is  to  be  banished  from  the  world, 
Germany  must  be  completely  overwhelmed, 


The  War  Against  War        39 

and  the  falsity  of  this  philosophy  be  demon- 
strated in  mothers'  tears  and  widows'  lamen- 
tations. The  allied  nations  are  primarily 
waging  war  upon  war,  and  civilization  re- 
quires that  they  be  completely  successful. 

We  Americans  hate  war.  Most  of  us  be- 
lieve that  owing  to  a  failure  to  make  a  just 
distinction  between  cause  and  effect  we  have 
allowed  this  hatred  of  war  to  lead  us  into 
a  condition  of  military  weakness  which  is 
almost  criminal.  So  long  as  the  German 
doctrine  of  the  glory  of  war  prevails  in  any 
great  and  powerful  nation,  other  nations 
must  be  ready  to  oppose  it  successfully. 
Owing  to  our  military  weakness  and  the 
weakness  of  the  present  Administration  we 
have  also  submitted  to  outrages  against  us 
in  Mexico  and  elsewhere  which  would  have 
seemed  to  us  intolerable  had  we  been  in  a 
position  to  have  compelled  an  end  to  them. 

We  have  nothing  against  the  people  of 
Germany.  Many  of  their  qualities  we  like, 
many  we  greatly  admire.  So  far  as  the 
people  are  concerned  we  have  no  desire  to 


40        The  War  Against  War 

see  them  humiliated.  But  we  believe  that 
the  people  of  Germany  have  allowed  them- 
selves to  be  so  dominated  by  the  military 
caste  that  they  represent  militarism  to  the 
world,  and  that  only  by  their  utter  humilia- 
tion can  the  institution  of  war  be  humiliated. 
They  must  be  made  to  pay  a  bitter  penalty 
for  the  fact  that  they  have  permitted  them- 
selves to  stand  for  the  glorification  of  war. 
This  they  ought  long  ago  to  have  prevented, 
even  at  the  cost  of  revolution. 

I  should  be  proud  to  call  myself  a  pacifist 
if  the  word  had  not  been  so  grossly  misused. 
True  pacifism  differs  from  the  unworthy, 
dishonorable,  and  degraded  pacifism  of  men 
like  Bryan  and  Henry  Ford  as  day  from  dark- 
ness. Peace  with  honor  is  the  highest  ideal 
of  a  statesman;  peace  at  any  price  is  the 
mark  of  the  poltroon.  The  real  pacifist  is 
the  man  who  seeks  to  accomplish  a  righteous 
end  by  peaceful  means,  not  the  coward  who 
refuses  to  accomplish  it  unless  it  can  be  done 
by  peace.  The  true  pacifist  will  not  shrink 
at  war  if  justice  cannot  be  attained  by  peace, 


The  War  Against  War        41 

but  he  will  never  advocate  an  unjust  war. 
War  is  a  horrible  thing,  but  there  are  things 
more  horrible;  there  are  prices  too  high  to 
pay  for  peace.  No  decent  man  thinks  twice 
of  danger  or  discomfort  if  the  safety  of  his 
country  requires  his  aid  in  war;  no  decent 
nation  thinks  twice  if  its  honor  and  the  pro- 
motion of  justice  require  it  to  engage  in  war. 

The  need  for  great  armament  and  pre- 
paredness in  the  United  States  depends  princi- 
pally upon  the  outcome  of  this  war  upon  war. 
I  hold  it  shameful  that  at  the  present  time  we 
are  not  sharing  in  the  burden  of  this  most 
holy  of  wars.  I  believe  that  at  the  outbreak 
of  the  conflict  we  ought  to  have  dropped  every 
pursuit  that  interfered  with  preparations 
to  render  whatever  services  might  be  needed 
by  the  allied  nations,  and  that  we  ought  to 
have  become  one  of  the  allies.  I  think  that 
even  now,  while  Germany  is  still  fighting  on 
foreign  soil  and  defeat  has  not  yet  been 
demonstrated,  neither  money  nor  effort  should 
be  spared  by  us  in  accomplishing  preparedness. 

When  Germany  has  been  completely  over- 


42         The  War  Against  War 

thrown  and  lies  prostrate,  a  very  different 
condition  will  prevail.  All  of  the  world 
which  counts  will  have  become  essentially 
democratic,  for  nothing  is  more  certain  that 
a  republican  form  of  government  will  follow 
the  defeat  of  Germany  and  Austria.  Even 
in  victorious  Russia  the  change  in  conditions 
resulting  from  the  war  will  have  advanced 
the  people  a  long  way  toward  democracy. 
The  fundamental  truth  cannot  be  too  often 
reiterated,  that  unjust  and  aggressive  wars 
are  never  instituted  by  democracies,  but 
are  invariably  occasioned  by  the  desire  of 
rulers  to  advantage  themselves  in  power  at 
the  cost  of  the  blood  of  their  people.  With 
this  democratization  of  the  great  nations, 
the  danger  of  great  war  will  have  passed 
away,  and  small  armies  will  be  sufficient  to 
wage  the  small  wars  which  will  undoubtedly 
still  be  necessary  to  police  the  little  half- 
civilized  nations. 

So  far  as  navies  are  concerned,  there  is 
only  one  which  matters  in  the  world  to-day, 
and  it  is  wholly  needless  that  there  should 


The  War  Against  War        43 

be  more  than  one.  For  nearly  a  hundred 
years  this  navy  has  been  used  to  protect  the 
seas  and  to  promote  justice,  and  we  have 
every  right  to  expect  that  it  always  will  be 
so  used.  I  hope  that  the  time  may  yet  come 
when  all  the  world  will  unite  in  the  support 
of  this  navy  which  has  been  and  must  be 
used  primarily  for  world  advance.  No  na- 
tion for  many  years  will  be  able  to  compete 
with  the  navy  of  Great  Britain;  no  just 
nation  need  wish  to  compete  with  it.  Great 
Britain  is  to-day  a  true  democracy,  and  this 
is  a  guaranty  that  her  navy  will  not  be  un- 
justly used.  "For  what  we  are  about  to 
receive,  thank  God  and  the  British  fleet," 
is  a  common  grace  in  England,  and  every 
decent  nation,  did  it  but  know  it,  has  almost 
as  much  cause  to  give  thanks  for  the  British 
fleet  as  England  herself.  It  is  very  certain 
that  we  in  the  United  States  owe  to  the  British 
fleet  and  to  the  law  and  order  which  it  has 
maintained  upon  the  seven  seas  our  safety 
and  prosperity.  If  our  own  navy  is  as  power- 
ful as  that  of  Japan,  for  the  sake  of  illustra- 


44        The  War  Against  War 

tion,  it  will  be  plenty  strong  enough  for  our 
needs,  provided  that  this  strength  is  main- 
tained as  a  high  standard  of  efficiency. 

A  year  from  now,  when  the  war  against 
war  has  been  won,  I  believe  that  it  will  be 
wholly  unnecessary  to  have  a  huge  increase 
in  the  American  standing  army.  But  the 
question  is  very  different  whether  the  nation 
can  afford  not  to  have  a  reserve  of  the  whole 
citizenship  made  moderately  effective  by  a 
brief  compulsory  universal  training  in  the 
fundamentals  of  soldiering.  An  attendance 
of  perhaps  three  months  the  first  year,  one 
month  the  second  year,  and  two  weeks  for 
each  of  the  following  three  years  would 
accomplish  a  great  deal.  Modern  sanitary 
science  has  done  away  with  the  danger  of 
disease  in  military  camps,  and  such  compul- 
sory service  will  bring  about  the  enormous 
advantage  of  physical  and  moral  discipline 
incident  thereto,  as  well  as  furnish  the 
skeleton  of  an  organization  of  units  which 
can  be  rapidly  and  economically  mobilized 
in  time  of  need.  It  can  be  made  to  accom- 


The  War  Against  War        45 

plish  the  almost  ideal  condition  of  compulsory 
training  in  time  of  peace  coupled  with  volun- 
tary enlistment  in  time  of  war.  Its  greatest 
value  will,  however,  in  my  estimation,  be  the 
added  efficiency  which  such  discipline  will 
bring  to  the  nation  in  time  of  peace  rather  than 
added  safety  in  time  of  war.  No  one  who  has 
not  seen  it  would  credit  the  difference  which  a 
couple  of  months  of  such  training  makes  in 
a  body  of  men,  and  I  do  not  think  that  in 
future  the  nation  can  allow  its  young  men  to 
lack  these  advantages  in  physical  and  mental 
powers,  any  more  than  it  can  allow  its  chil- 
dren to  grow  up  illiterate.  The  productive 
power  of  the  country  in  the  pursuits  of  peace 
will  be  hugely  increased  by  such  healthful 
discipline  of  its  young  manhood,  and  the 
homogeneity  of  the  nation,  now  so  sadly 
lacking,  will  be  geatly  promoted  thereby. 

All  these  matters  are  predicated  upon  the 
issue  of  this  great  war  against  war.  Until 
it  is  finally  won,  until  great  war  in  the  future 
is  made  impossible  by  the  success  of  war  for 
the  sake  of  mankind  and  the  defeat  of  war 


46        The  War  Against  War 

for  war's  sake,  it  is  the  duty  of  every  nation 
to  devote  itself  to  preparation  so  that  if 
needed  it  may  be  ready  to  throw  its  whole 
weight  into  the  war.  If  the  lamentable  and 
unexpected  issue  of  this  war  should  be  nuga- 
tory, should  be  a  stalemate,  these  prepara- 
tions must  be  continued  until  victory  shall 
be  assured  in  the  next  war  which  in  such 
event  will  be  inevitable.  Delenda  est  Car- 
thago. The  German  system  and  the  German 
autocracy  must  be  utterly  routed  and  put 
out  of  existence  even  should  it  require  the 
flower  of  the  manhood  of  the  world  to  ac- 
complish it.  Until  then  peace  will  not  mean 
peace,  but  only  a  temporary  suspension  of 
war.  With  the  overthrow  of  Germany, 
the  anachronism  of  great  war  will  have  passed 
away  forever  from  the  world. 


OSHKOSH  COUNTY  AND    FLANDERS 

MY  friends,  betake  yourselves  to  the 
countryside  about  you.  The  fields 
stretch  broad  and  rich,  the  young  wheat 
is  glorious  in  its  greenness,  the  noble  trees 
of  the  timber  lots  hold  sweet-scented  shade 
beneath  their  boughs,  the  cattle  and  the 
sheep  graze  along  the  roadsides,  and  over 
the  clover  comes  the  sleepy  drone  of  the 
bumblebee.  It  seems  as  if  peace  and  kindly 
nature  had  made  a  bond  indissoluble,  and 
that  all  the  change  that  can  ever  come  to  the 
land  will  be  the  rotation  of  the  seasons. 

Yet  as  you  look  upon  these  fruitful  farms 
and  the  trim  farmhouses,  mellow  in  the 
sunshine,  think  on  those  others  fields  of 
Poland  and  of  Belgium  and  of  Galicia,  fields 
where  the  sun  shines  as  lovingly,  but  where 
there  is  no  peace  nor  the  orderly  tillage  of 
straight  furrows.  It  is  not  the  plowshare 
47 


48  Oshkosh  County  and  Flanders 

that  has  made  those  hollows  but  the  scream- 
ing shell;  those  woodlands  are  torn  and 
twisted  by  shrieking  iron,  and  in  place  of 
the  perfume  of  the  spring  flowers  comes  the 
stench  of  rotting  horses  and  the  pollution 
that  once  was  brave  young  manhood.  De- 
vastation and  desolation  and  the  heaps  of 
ruins  and  the  charred  rafters  where  the  houses 
used  to  stand;  over  all  either  the  loneliness 
of  desertion  or  the  din  of  great  guns  and  the 
confusion  of  armies  of  determined  men. 

To-day  the  great  corporation  which  is 
called  the  World  has  reached  a  point  where 
these  two  scenes  are  inseparably  joined 
together.  It  matters  not  that  there  may  be 
a  thousand  leagues  of  salt  sea-ridges  throb- 
bing between  them ;  it  is  of  no  avail  that  many 
a  stolid  man  would  fain  deny  his  responsibil- 
ity and  say  that  what  happens  so  far  afield 
concerns  him  not.  What  is  happening  on 
the  battlefields  of  Europe  does  concern  us; 
it  is  our  fight  that  is  being  fought,  our  fight 
and  the  fight  of  every  man  in  the  world  to 
whom  freedom  is  dear  and  liberty  more  than 


Oshkosh  County  and  Flanders  49 

an  empty  name.  The  men  in  those  distant 
trenches  are  daring  and  dying  for  the  little 
farmhouse  in  the  back-country  of  America, 
and  for  ten  million  other  farmhouses  all 
over  every  continent  of  the  earth. 

This  is  the  great  question  which  is  at  issue 
in  this  strife,  the  question  of  the  right  of  the 
individual  tiller  of  the  soil  or  artisan  to  order 
his  own  life  and  follow  out  his  own  pursuit 
of  happiness.  When  this  war  has  been  won, 
we  shall  be  able  to  drive  militarism  into  the 
darkness  of  oblivion  where  it  belongs,  and 
the  millions  of  white  farmhouses  in  Europe 
as  in  America  shall  send  their  sons  to  the  care 
of  their  fertile  field  instead  of  seeing  them 
herded  to  the  agonies  of  the  trenches. 

There  is  one  huge  and  mastering  idea  of 
which  we  must  never  for  a  moment  lose  sight, 
that  this  war  is  the  last  struggle  of  tyranny 
and  despotism  to  overthrow  on  any  great 
scale  the  growing  forces  of  democracy. 
Those  acres  of  ripening  crops  on  the  rolling 
hills  and  plains,  those  farmhouses  surrounded 
by  the  dreamy  cattle,  are  the  symbol  of  the 


50  Oshkosh  County  and  Flanders 

democracy  for  which  our  brothers  are  fighting. 
Their  peace  and  their  safety  are  at  stake 
even  though  not  yet  has  the  banner  of  the 
Imperial  German  eagle  been  planted  on 
American  soil.  How  long  a  shrift,  think  you, 
would  this  farmland  which  you  love  be  given 
if  the  forces  of  Britain  and  of  France  were 
to  go  down  to  defeat?  How  long  would  it 
be  before  the  arrogant  taskmasters  of  Prussia 
would  seek  to  impose  their  will  and  levy 
their  tribute  upon  these  American  farms? 
How  long  could  you  continue  to  exercise 
your  right  of  self-government  if  the  Philos- 
ophy of  Force  and  the  doctrine  of  the  Right 
of  the  Krupp  Gun  to  Rule  were  allowed  to 
prevail? 

This  is  a  war  such  as  never  before  has  been 
fought  in  the  history  of  the  world,  not  only 
in  its  bigness,  not  only  in  the  numbers  of  its 
armies,  but  because  for  the  first  time  on  a 
great  world-scale  is  being  fought  the  battle 
of  democracy  against  despotism,  the  battle 
of  the  people  of  the  world  against  the  rulers, 
the  battle  of  the  right  to  live  in  peace  against 


Oshkosh  County  and  Flanders  51 

the  right  to  make  war.  Should  despotism 
win,  this  war  will  be  but  a  prelude  to  other 
and  greater  wars,  as  has  been  the  case 
since  the  birth  of  mankind;  should  hereditary 
and  self -continuing  dynasties  prove  victori- 
ous they  will  again  seek  to  increase  their 
power  and  their  riches  at  the  expense  of  the 
people  of  the  world.  So  long  as  the  German 
doctrine  that  the  citizen  exists  for  the  benefit 
of  the  state  shall  be  permitted  to  prevail,  so 
long  shall  war  and  its  accompaniments 
continue;  when  the  kinder  democratic  axiom 
that  the  state  exists  but  for  the  citizen  is 
acknowledged  in  all  the  great  countries  of 
the  world,  then  shall  great  wars  cease,  and 
in  peace  shall  the  lands  of  the  earth  have 
their  chance  to  be  fruitful  and  to  multiply. 

Blind,  blind,  blind  are  those  leaders  who 
cannot  see  beyond  the  horrors  of  the  strife 
itself  the  purpose  that  is  being  accomplished. 
It  is  for  them  whom  they  represent  that  this 
huge  conflict  is  being  carried  on,  for  the  tillers 
of  the  soil,  for  the  workmen  at  their  benches 
and  their  lathes,  for  all  whose  industry  is 


52  Oshkosh  County  and  Flanders 

serving  the  cause  of  civilization.  If,  in  this 
last  and  greatest  effort,  the  failure  of  auto- 
cratic rulers  to  continue  an  outworn  feudalism 
shall  be  absolute,  it  will  mean  for  the  whole 
world  a  new  freedom  and  a  new  safety.  No 
matter  how  great  the  sacrifice,  no  matter  how 
heavy  the  toll  of  our  bravest  and  our  best,we 
shall  achieve  a  new  condition  in  the  world, 
and  the  old  and  evil  system  of  the  right  of 
military  might  and  the  authority  of  emperors 
shall  forever  pass  away. 

Your  king  and  country  need  you!  Yes, 
but  more  than  your  king  and  more  than  your 
country,  your  world  and  your  twentieth 
century  and  your  ideals  of  freedom  need  you. 
When  you  give  your  life  to  this  noble  cause, 
it  is  not  only  to  Canada  or  Great  Britain  or 
the  United  States  that  you  give  it;  you  give 
it  to  the  whole  world,  to  America  and  Europe 
and  Asia,  even  to  the  people  of  Germany 
who  will  be  better  and  happier  under  the 
happier  and  better  conditions  which  will 
result  for  that  land  as  for  all  others  when 
the  present  madness  has  passed  away.  This 


Oshkosh  County  and  Flanders  53 

war  is  not  a  war  between  nations,  however 
much  national  ambitions  and  selfishnesses 
have  been  injected  into  it ;  it  is  a  war  between 
systems  and  ideals;  it  is  between  a  future 
bright  with  hopes  of  happiness  and  opportu- 
nities for  educated  and  self-respecting  people 
and  the  corruption  which  has  survived  from 
the  tyrannies  of  the  past ;  it  is  a  war  between 
war  enthroned  and  deified  on  the  one  side 
and  peace  ennobled  on  the  other. 

We  must  make  the  sacrifice  now;  we  who 
love  peace  must  fight  the  bloodiest  of  wars. 
We  must  fight  for  the  salvation  of  our  honor 
and  our  self-respect,  for  our  liberties  and 
our  freedom,  for  the  peace  and  happiness  of 
our  children  and  the  children  of  our  children's 
children.  Our  brothers  are  fighting  as  truly 
for  those  farms  in  your  peaceful  countryside 
as  if  they  too  lay  in  Flanders,  and  as  if  al- 
ready their  woodlands  were  splintered  by  the 
bursting  shell  and  their  cattle  lay  bloated 
and  foul  where  the  fumes  of  barbarous 
poisons  have  blighted  another  fair  and 
innocent  land. 


RESPONSIBILITY,  METHODS, 
PURPOSE 

IN  judging  the  moral  justification  for  the 
war,  three  things  must  be  considered: 
the  responsibility  for  bringing  on  the  war,  the 
methods  by  which  it  is  carried  on,  and  the 
purpose  or  cause  sought  to  be  attained  by  it. 
All  of  these  affect  the  position  of  the  United 
States  if  it  be  granted,  as  I  believe  it  should 
be,  that  the  moral  side  of  the  question  of  our 
attitude  ought  to  outweigh  our  selfish  or  our 
financial  interests. 

It  is  important  to  note  that  officially  the 
United  States  has  concerned  itself  only  with 
the  second  of  these  considerations,  and  has 
ignored  both  the  first  and  the  third.  If  it 
enters  into  the  war  against  Germany,  if  it 
becomes  involved  in  serious  disputes  with 
Great  Britain  or  with  France,  it  will  be  en- 
tirely on  account  of  the  methods  by  which 
54 


Responsibility,  Methods,  Purpose  55 

these  nations  have  made  war,  and  the  con- 
sequent injury  to  the  United  States. 

The  world  outside  of  the  belligerents  has 
carefully  considered  both  the  responsibility 
for  the  war  and  the  methods  used,  and  has 
come  in  regard  to  both  to  an  almost  unani- 
mous condemnation  of  Germany.  But  I  do 
not  think  that  it  has  nearly  so  clearly  reasoned 
concerning  the  purpose  of  the  war,  and  this 
to  my  mind  is  by  far  the  most  important 
matter,  and  should  have  controlling  influ- 
ence in  deciding  the  course  of  nations  not 
already  involved. 

The  responsibility  for  the  war  concerns 
the  past.  Jacta  est  alea.  But  even  if  we 
accept  in  full  the  theory  that  Germany  willed 
the  war,  that  it  was  the  deliberate  intention 
of  the  German  rulers  to  bring  it  about,  that 
doing  so  was  an  unspeakable  crime,  an  im- 
morality for  which  no  punishment  could  be  too 
severe,  it  does  not  follow  that  for  this  sin 
the  United  States  ought  to  take  part  in  the 
war.  Punishment  can,  never  be  worth  while 
except  as  a  means  for  preventing  a  repetition 


56  Responsibility,  Methods,  Purpose 

of  the  evil,  as  a  deterrent  example.  This 
responsibility  may  be  such  as  to  make  us 
regard  Germany  with  horror  and  aversion; 
it  is  no  reason  why  we  should  ourselves  un- 
dergo the  penalties  of  war.  On  this  count 
the  Kaiser  and  his  crew  may  well  be  left  to 
the  shame  of  their  blackened  consciences, 
to  the  ghastly  phantoms  of  the  dead  that 
must  haunt  their  pillows.  It  were  Quixotic 
for  us  to  feel  that  we  must  as  a  nation  punish 
at  such  cost  to  ourselves. 

The  methods  of  the  war  concern  the  pre- 
sent only,  except  in  so  far  as  the  example  of 
such  methods  shall  serve  as  a  guide  for  the 
future.  It  is  the  world  of  to-day  that  is 
suffering  from  barbarisms  and  inhumanities; 
it  is  the  trade  of  to-day  that  complains  of 
undue  restrictions  and  financial  hardships. 
It  is  we  ourselves  who  are  affected,  not  our 
children's  children.  These  methods  may 
be  such  as  to  justify  a  protest  against  Great 
Britain  and  France  on  the  part  of  the  United 
States;  they  undoubtedly  have  been  such  as 
to  demand  active  participation  in  the  war 


Responsibility,  Methods,  Purpose  57 

against  Germany  if  the  honor  of  the  nation 
and  the  safety  of  its  citizens  are  to  be  main- 
tained, and  if  we  hold  we  owe  any  duty  to 
humanity  and  the  decencies  of  law  and  order. 
The  methods  of  the  war  are  what  we  see 
before  us,  what  we  read  of  in  the  papers, 
what  appeal  to  the  man  in  the  street,  what 
affect  our  pocket-books  and  excite  our 
imaginations.  The  duty  we  owe  to  ourselves 
demands  that  these  methods  be  legal,  and 
the  endeavors  of  President  Wilson  to  accom- 
plish this  legality  are  undeniably  justified, 
however  much  Americans  like  myself  may 
deem  them  tardy,  weak,  and  wholly  insuffi- 
cient to  the  occasion. 

The  purpose  of  the  war  concerns  the  future. 
It  is  an  attempt  by  Germany  to  impose  upon 
the  world  a  dynastic  autocracy,  a  doctrine 
of  might,  a  philosophy  of  force.  It  seeks 
that  the  world  of  the  future  shall  be  ruled  by 
fear  rather  than  by  justice,  by  will  rather  than 
by  right.  It  is  an  assault  upon  the  theory 
of  democracy,  to  the  development  of  which 
the  world  has  devoted  the  best  part  of  two 


58   Responsibility,  Methods,  Purpose 

centuries.     It  affects  not  only  us  of  to-day 
but  the  generations  to  come. 

Every  nation  in  the  world  is  concerned  in 
this  purpose  as  much  as  the  belligerents. 
When  we  say  that  England  is  fighting  the 
battle  of  the  United  States,  we  glimpse, 
however  hazily  and  indistinctly,  this  purpose 
behind  the  war.  When  we  shudder  at  the 
blasphemous  Kaiser  citing  God  as  his  ally, 
it  is  because  an  instinctive  appreciation  of 
this  purpose  horrifies  us  at  such  an  association. 

I  hold  that  Germany's  purpose,  her  attack 
on  the  principles  of  democracy  and  all  that 
the  United  States  has  stood  for  from  the  be- 
ginning, has  done  to  the  nation  an  injury 
incomparably  greater  than  that  caused  by 
the  barbarity  and  illegality  of  her  methods, 
hugely  more  damaging  than  the  loss  of  a  few 
hundred  American  lives  or  a  few  million 
American  dollars.  This  purpose  has  struck 
at  our  ideals,  at  our  traditions,  at  all  that 
raises  us  above  the  well-fed  cattle  or  the 
comfortable  sheep.  Were  the  cause  of  Ger- 
many to  prevail,  the  United  States  would 


Responsibility,  Methods,  Purpose  59 

cease  to  exist,  for  the  world  could  not  con- 
tain a  dominant  Germany  and  an  idealistic 
America.  Even  could  the  carcass  of  our 
country  continue  to  live,  its  soul,  its  identity, 
would  die,  and  it  could  no  longer  serve  as 
an  inspiration  to  lesser  peoples. 

Yet  against  this  purpose  of  Germany, 
against  this  attack  on  the  soul  of  the  world, 
against  this  endeavor  to  poison  not  only 
ourselves  but  our  future  generations,  the 
Government  of  the  United  States  has  not 
said  one  word.  None  of  its  protest  has  been 
based  upon  the  higher  and  more  commanding 
necessity  of  maintaining  the  orderly  evolu- 
tion of  nations.  Nothing  has  been  said  to 
show  that  it  would  not  regard  with  equanim- 
ity the  victory  of  the  German  cause  so  long 
as  in  achieving  it  the  German  methods  did 
not  interfere  with  American  lives  or  properties. 

I  believe  that  my  country  ought  to  prove 
that  it  is  willing  to  share  in  the  sacrifices 
demanded  by  the  preservation  of  the  ideals 
for  which  it  has  stood,  and  to  help  to  bear 
the  burden  Germany  has  imposed  upon  the 


60  Responsibility,  Methods,  Purpose 

world.  I  regret  beyond  power  of  expression 
that  President  Wilson  has  not  made  it  clear 
that  America  stands  for  more  than  the  pro- 
tection of  its  existing  rights.  Even  the 
sacrifice  of  the  lives  of  our  young  men  would 
not  be  in  vain  if  before  their  glazing  eyes 
should  pass  the  vision  of  duty  owed  to  their 
world  and  to  the  dignity  of  their  common 
manhood.  The  Lusitania  and  the  Arabic, 
Belgium  and  Armenia,  have  called  us  in 
clarion  tones  to  abandon  our  slothful  ease 
and  vindicate  our  liberties;  much  louder  and 
more  resonantly,  although  perhaps  less  dis- 
tinctly, comes  the  call  of  mankind  and  of  the 
generations  to  come  that  we  make  the  great 
sacrifice  to  secure  to  them  the  conditions  of 
freedom  of  individual  development  to  which 
they  are  entitled. 


SIR  EDWARD  GREY 

T^HERE  has  been  considerable  dissatis- 
*  faction  in  certain  quarters  with  Sir 
Edward  Grey's  conduct  of  the  Foreign  Office 
during  the  war.  No  Briton  fails  to  render 
him  justice  for  his  splendid  services  to  man- 
kind during  the  events  which  led  up  to  the 
war. 

All  this  criticism,  when  analyzed,  amounts 
to  declaring  that  Sir  Edward  is  too  civilized 
to  suit  warfare;  that  he  refused  to  allow 
Great  Britain  to  attack  Bulgaria  until  that 
nation  had  definitely  put  itself  in  the  wrong; 
that  he  has  not  displaced  justice  with  expe- 
diency, or  lied  and  threatened  reprisals  and 
frightfulness.  War  at  best  is  quite  uncivil- 
ized, however  necessary  it  may  occasionally 
prove  for  the  protection  of  civilization;  the 
cause  of  civilization  requires  that  even  in 
war  the  return  to  barbarism  be_as  slight  as 

61 


62  Sir  Edward  Grey 

possible.  It  is  far  better  for  this  world  and 
for  England  to  accept  greater  losses  than  to 
consent  to  sacrifice  high  honor  to  the  military 
needs  of  the  moment.  This  of  course  does 
not  mean  that  Great  Britain  might  not  have 
anticipated  events  by  preparing  for  them, 
and  that  it  would  not  have  been  wise  last 
summer  to  have  had  a  half  a  million  troops  in 
Serbia,  but  these  matters  are  primarily  mili- 
tary rather  than  diplomatic. 

It  is  at  the  end  of  the  war  that  the  civili- 
zation of  Sir  Edward  Grey  will  be  most 
needed.  The  recent  speech  of  Mr.  Runciman 
has  not  been  repudiated  by  England  as  it 
deserves.  He  proposed  that  commercial  re- 
prisals be  made  against  Germany  after  the 
end  of  the  war  such  as  should  prevent  Ger- 
man trade  from  again  becoming  a  serious 
competitor  of  British  trade.  This  stand  at 
once  dethrones  the  British  cause  from  the 
high  plane  it  occupies,  and  serves  to  fill  the 
ammunition  pouches  of  those  who  assert 
that  this  is  a  commercial  war  and  not  one 
involving  the  principles  of  freedom. 


Sir  Edward  Grey  63 

The  world  has  no  quarrel  with  the  people 
of  Germany;  it  has  an  unending  quarrel  with 
the  system  the  people  of  Germany  have 
allowed  to  be  imposed  upon  them.  After 
the  war  has  been  won,  these  people  will  in 
any  event  suffer  under  a  legacy  of  hate  and 
a  burden  of  debt  which  will  bring  them  heavy 
punishment;  it  is  most  important  that  there 
shall  be  no  artificial  and  needless  obstacles 
to  the  rehabilitation  of  the  new  democracy, 
which  must  necessarily  come  to  them  as  the 
one  recompense  for  what  they  shall  have 
suffered  in  their  defeat.  The  people  cannot 
be  exterminated  and  no  one  wants  to  exter- 
minate them  except  in  the  passion  of  imme- 
diate hate;  any  such  aftermath  of  the  war 
as  that  advocated  by  Mr.  Runciman  will 
only  serve  to  breed  future  wars  and  to  nega- 
tive the  great  world  advance  which  we  hope 
to  see  accomplished  by  this  war.  The  sons 
of  Freedom  have  not  died  to  promote  vin- 
dictiveness  and  a  narrow  nationalism. 

It  is  in  these  matters  and  in  the  settlement 
of  the  terms  of  peace  that  the  restraint  and 


64  Sir  Edward  Grey 

the  civilization  of  Sir  Edward  Grey  will  be 
most  vitally  required.  Let  us  hope  that 
no  political  upsets  will  occur  which  at  that 
great  juncture  shall  deprive  the  world  of  his 
temperate  wisdom.  May  the  British  Empire 
retain  in  the  termination  of  the  war  the  same 
high  sense  of  national  honor  and  probity 
demonstrated  at  its  inception  and  in  the 
British  methods  of  carrying  it  on. 


THE  SOUL  OF  MY  COUNTRY 

IVAANKIND  differs  from  the  brutes  in 
' "  appreciating  the  worth  of  things 
intangible,  of  values  other  than  the  creature 
comforts  of  food  and  warmth.  Civilization 
measures  the  degree  to  which  a  people  de- 
votes itself  to  these  intangibles.  The  basis 
of  this  appreciation  is  unselfishness,  a  will- 
ingness to  sacrifice  some  of  the  eating  and 
warmth  for  the  psychological  satisfaction  of 
art,  poetry,  music,  and  literature,  or  the  even 
less  concrete  forms  of  charity,  public  service, 
and  the  love  of  liberty. 

Selfishness  is,  next  to  cowardice,  the  qual- 
ity most  vile  in  man,  and  the  greatest  foe 
to  the  development  of  civilization.  The 
civilizing  influence  of  Christianity  has  been 
due  to  the  Golden  Rule,  which  is  simply  a 
command  to  be  unselfish.  And  now  that 
civilization  has  become  something  which 


66       The  Soul  of  my  Country 

affects  the  world  as  a  whole  rather  than  each 
of  the  nations  of  which  it  is  composed,  na- 
tional unselfishness  becomes  even  more  im- 
portant than  individual  unselfishness. 

This  war  is  entirely  attributable  to  the 
failure  of  the  nations  to  apply  the  Golden 
Rule  to  themselves.  The  selfish  German 
Junkers  sought  by  war  to  increase  their 
wealth  and  power,  and  used  the  national 
selfishness  of  their  country  as  the  means  to 
accomplish  it.  No  motto  can  be  more  un- 
Christian  than  Deutschland  uber  Alles,  and, 
unless  we  carefully  limit  its  application, 
America  First  is  nearly  as  bad.  The  fact 
that  the  German  people  more,  perhaps, 
than  any  other,  recognizes  the  value  of  co- 
operation— a  synonym  for  immediate  un- 
selfishness— within  the  country  makes  it 
extraordinary  that  it  should  so  utterly  have 
failed  to  practice  it  among  nations. 

From  the  turmoil  and  misery  of  war, 
Europe  has  learned  the  need  for  individual 
unselfishness.  The  spirit  of  service  is  there 
supreme,  in  Germany,  fighting  for  an  evil 


The  Soul  of  my  Country       67 

cause,  as  much  as  in  those  nations  fighting 
for  truth  and  liberty.  Europe  has  a  clearer 
understanding  than  before  of  the  value  of 
abstract  things  like  honor  and  good  faith,  a 
better  knowledge  of  the  real  meaning  of  life 
and  the  insignificance  of  death.  France  has 
regained  her  lost  and  tortured  soul,  and  looks 
clear-eyed  to  the  future,  for  which  her  high 
self-denial  shall  be  an  inspiration.  England 
has  cast  away  her  fat  and  easy  content;  the 
nation  has  looked  upon  its  dead  and  is  put- 
ting aside  childish  things.  Russia  is  aroused 
to  new  and  loftier  ideals,  and  will  never  again 
drowse  in  the  drugged  and  poisoned  sleep 
of  the  past.  And  even  Germany  is  cleansing 
her  national  soul  by  self-sacrifice  for  a  readier 
acceptance  of  the  new  and  nobler  democratic 
ideals  which  will  be  her  only  recompense  for 
the  bitterness  of  defeat,  and  the  hatred  of  the 
world  which  the  worship  of  her  false  gods 
will  have  brought  to  her.  Europe  will  be 
poorer  in  purse,  burdened  with  loss  and 
saddened  by  multitudinous  death,  but  richer 
in  sentiment  and  ideals.  So,  too,  with 


68       The  Soul  of  my  Country 

Canada,  Australia,  and  the  other  lands 
which  have  dared  and  bled. 

What  of  the  United  States,  what  of  the 
soul  of  my  country?  We  have  not  starved 
or  bled  for  our  principles;  we  have  profited 
in  wealth  from  the  war.  We  have  fattened 
on  the  needs  of  the  world ;  we  have  capitalized 
death;  we  have  squeezed  dollars  out  of  blood 
and  misery.  The  clarion  call  came  to  us  to 
take  our  stand  immovable  for  international 
honor  and  justice,  to  heed  the  cry  of  demo- 
cracy wantonly  attacked,  to  make  internation- 
al law  a  fact,  rather  than  a  figment,  to  be  true 
to  the  traditions  of  our  history,  even  at  the 
possible  cost  of  war.  But  to  this  call  to  the 
service  of  mankind,  to  this  cry  that  we,  too, 
show  that  we  are  willing  to  sacrifice  a  part 
of  our  eating  and  our  warmth  for  the  great 
intangibles,  our  government  turned  a  deaf 
ear.  The  selling  of  our  cotton,  the  marketing 
of  our  wheat,  was  its  concern. 

If  this  be  the  meaning  of  America  First, 
may  we  never  adopt  the  motto.  Many 
believe  that  it  is  no  more  than  a  demand  for 


The  Soul  of  my  Country       69 

national  selfishness,  that  we  Germanize  our- 
selves. But  if  it  mean  that  we  must  raise 
America  up  in  emulation  of  the  virtues  of 
other  nations  until  it  surpasses  them,  if  it 
mean  the  highest  devotion  to  the  intangibles 
of  existence  rather  than  to  the  eatings  and 
the  warmth,  if  it  mean  that  America  must 
by  us  be  made  first  in  greatness  of  soul,  not 
depth  of  pocket,  and  that  all  our  power  must 
be  dedicated  primarily  to  the  service  of  man- 
kind, to  the  practice  of  the  Golden  Rule 
among  nations,  then  ought  we  proudly  to 
adopt  it. 

The  history  of  the  United  States  has  been 
that  of  a  people  which  more  than  any  other 
has  believed  in  idealism.  We  first  demon- 
strated the  feasibility  of  modern  democracy 
and  showed  that,  however  imperfectly  we 
may  have  worked  it  out,  none  the  less  it 
contains  more  than  any  other  form  of  govern- 
ment the  germs  of  happiness  for  the  peoples 
of  the  world.  We  have  prided  ourselves  on 
our  ability,  through  the  universal  education 
which  we  offer,  to  take  into  our  melting-pot 


70       The  Soul  of  my  Country 

the  races  of  the  world  and  to  remake  them 
into  Americans.  We  have  proved  the  sin- 
cerity of  our  belief  in  liberty  by  war  with 
England,  by  civil  war,  and  by  war  with  Spain, 
when  we  thought  that  liberty  was  endangered. 
Even  those  who  to-day  exercise  the  most 
corrupting  influence  among  us,  the  Bryans, 
the  Hearsts,  and  their  like,  dare  not  speak 
except  in  the  form  and  phrases  of  idealism. 
Should  they  discard  their  sycophancy  and 
Pecksmffism  and  preach  aloud  the  selfishness 
of  their  hearts,  they  would  be  hooted  from 
the  stage. 

But  now,  while  all  the  rest  of  the  world 
is  growing  poorer,  we  are  growing  richer. 
Others  are  practicing  self-denial;  we  are 
giving  ourselves  up  to  self-indulgence.  The 
danger  is  that  in  our  sleek  comfort  we  become 
callous,  that  with  our  display,  our  luxuries, 
our  Broadways,  we  lose  the  idealism  which 
alone  can  justify  our  national  existence.  It 
is  high  time  for  us  to  show  that  we  are 
not  becoming  degenerate,  fat,  and  cowardly. 
The  nation  needs  to  prove  that  the  love  of 


The  Soul  of  my  Country       71 

liberty  is  still  ours,  and  that  we  utterly  and 
absolutely  repudiate  the  present  Administra- 
tion and  its  substitution  of  phrases  and  self- 
laudation  for  the  sacrifice  and  the  gunpowder 
of  our  ancestors.  We  cannot  keep  our  na- 
tional soul  unpolluted  without  the  self-respect 
that  comes  from  a  willingness  to  demonstrate 
that  the  intangibles  still  have  meaning  for 
us  and  that  smug  words  and  glib  periods 
will  not  suffice  us  when  our  world  cries  for 
deeds  and  self-sacrifice.  The  soul  of  my 
country  will  become  atrophied  and  will  die 
if  we  content  ourselves  with  the  eatings  and 
the  warmth;  we  must  show  that  honor  and 
faith  and  freedom  mean  as  much  to  us  as 
to  England  and  France  and  martyred  Bel- 
gium. We  must  have  the  vision  to  see  the 
great  and  high  intangibles,  and  the  courage 
for  their  sake  to  give  up  sales  of  cotton 
and  margins  on  war  stocks.  We  must  prove 
that  our  melting  pot  has  melted,  and  that 
the  pro-Germans  among  us  are  merely  the 
scum  of  impurity  which  gathers  around  its 
Up. 


NEUTRALITY 

A  NEUTRAL  nation  is  a  nation  which  is 
**  not  at  war.  A  neutral  person  is  a 
citizen  of  a  neutral  nation. 

Neutrality  has  therefore  nothing  to  do  with 
partisanship.  I  am  a  neutral,  although  I 
loathe  and  detest  all  that  Germany  represents 
in  this  war  and  admire  and  respect  the  pur- 
pose and  fortitude  of  France  and  Great 
Britain,  and  say  so  at  every  opportunity  in 
my  loudest  tones. 

Under  international  law  there  has  gradu- 
ally grown  up  a  generally  accepted  under- 
standing of  what  a  neutral  nation  should 
do  and  should  prevent.  But  it  should  be 
clearly  appreciated  that  a  failure  by  a  nation 
to  observe  its  neutral  proprieties  is  not 
necessarily  a  breach  of  duty ;  it  merely  affords 
the  belligerent  offended  a  grievance  which 
it  may  justifiably  consider  a  casus  belli  if  it 
72 


Neutrality  73 

so  desires.  A  neutral  owes  no  duties  to  a 
belligerent  other  than  the  general  duties 
which  it  owes  to  humanity  and  civilization; 
its  maintenance  of  neutrality  is  entirely  for 
its  own  sake.  No  matter  how  flagrant  a 
breach  of  neutrality  may  be,  the  offended 
belligerent  is  under  no  obligation  to  declare 
war  on  account  of  it;  no  matter  how  strictly 
neutrality  may  be  observed  it  does  not  pre- 
vent a  belligerent  from  declaring  war.  The 
rules  for  neutrals  serve  only  to  indicate  what 
the  consensus  of  world  opinion  considers  a 
justifiable  cause  for  war.  The  only  force 
to  compel  war  for  unneutral  acts  or  to  pre- 
vent war  when  neutrality  is  maintained  is 
the  force  of  public  opinion.  That  this  force 
is  often  quite  insufficient  to  cause  or  to  prevent 
war  is  evident.  No  one  thinks  that  Serbia's 
reply  to  the  Austrian  ultimatum  justified 
war,  or  that  Belgium  broke  neutrality ;  public 
opinion  of  the  world  was  absolutely  against 
the  invaders  of  these  nations,  but  it  was 
powerless  to  save  them.  Everyone  knows 
that  Greece  was  in  honor  bound  to  enter  the 


74  Neutrality 

war  in  Serbia's  support,  but  public  opinion 
of  the  world  was  unable  to  force  Greece  to 
enter  it. 

It  is  therefore  clear  that  until  a  world 
league  shall  have  been  established  obligated 
to  enforce  international  law,  obedience  to  the 
international  rules  for  neutrals  depends 
only  on  the  desire  of  the  neutral  itself.  When 
there  is  no  force  superior  to  the  will  of  a 
nation,  that  will  is  supreme,  and  its  exercise 
is  tempered  only  by  the  probability  of  the 
contemplated  acts  being  considered  as  a 
casus  belli  by  some  other  nation  similarly 
exercising  its  sovereign  will.  The  whole 
question  reduces  itself  thus  to  one  of  morals 
and  not  of  law,  for  morals  is  merely  another 
name  for  public  opinion. 

The  accepted  international  rules  govern- 
ing the  course  of  a  nation  desirous  of  pre- 
serving its  neutrality  are  very  few,  consisting 
mainly  of  certain  things  which  the  nation  as 
an  entity  must  refrain  from  doing,  such  as 
selling  its  navy  or  lending  its  credit  to  a  bel- 
ligerent, and  certain  things  which  it  must 


Neutrality  75 

prevent  within  its  territorial  jurisdiction, 
such  as  the  establishing  of  recruiting  stations 
by  a  belligerent  or  the  use  of  one  of  its  ports 
as  a  naval  base.  Any  activity  of  its  citi- 
zens outside  of  these  matters  is  not  a  breach 
of  neutrality  or  of  international  law,  even 
though  it  may  be  contrary  to  the  national 
laws  a  nation  may  have  established  for  the 
governance  of  its  citizens  in  their  relation 
to  foreign  war. 

In  short,  no  belligerent  is  obliged  to  con- 
sider any  act  of  a  neutral  a  casus  belli;  no 
maintenance  of  neutrality  can  prevent  a 
belligerent  from  declaring  war  if  it  so  desires. 

Neutrality  is  not  in  itself  a  thing  that  is 
noble  or  praiseworthy.  It  may  under  certain 
circumstances  be  wise  and  advisable  or  even 
right.  But  its  wisdom  or  its  righteousness 
depends  upon  each  particular  case,  and  no 
generalization  can  serve  as  a  guide.  It  is 
never  admirable,  but  often  excusable.  The 
present  neutrality  of  the  United  States  is 
neither. 

Non-partisanship  on  the  part  of  the  people 


76  Neutrality 

of  a  civilized  nation  is  an  impossibility  where 
the  war  is  one  of  importance,  and  would 
be  a  confession  of  ignorance  and  selfishness 
unworthy  of  thinking  persons.  An  appeal 
for  such  non-partisanship,  often  mis  termed 
personal  neutrality,  is  shameful  and  degrad- 
ing. The  most  intense  partisanship  on  the 
part  of  the  people  is  in  no  way  incompatible 
with  the  technical  neutrality  of  the  nation  as 
an  entity,  which  is  merely  a  refusal  to  inter- 
vene and  to  utilize  its  military  organization 
on  behalf  of  one  of  the  belligerents. 

Neutrality  is  observed  by  a  nation  broadly 
on  the  following  grounds : 

First.  Because  it  is  not  concerned  in  the 
question  at  issue  between  the  belligerents. 

Second.     Because  it  is  afraid  to  intervene. 

Third.  Because  the  issue  at  stake  is  of  less 
consequence  than  the  cost  of  intervention. 

Fourth.  Because  selfish  considerations 
show  that  it  can  profit  in  wealth  by  refusing 
to  intervene. 

Fifth.  Because  it  can  accomplish  more 
good  as  a  neutral  than  as  a  belligerent. 


Neutrality  77 

It  is  of  course  needless  to  argue  to  any 
intelligent  person  that  the  United  States  is 
not  concerned  in  the  question  at  issue  in 
the  European  War.  The  matter  has  been 
thrashed  out  so  thoroughly  that  we  recognize 
that  both  in  the  abstract  and  in  the  concrete 
it  concerns  us  vitally.  In  the  abstract,  it  is 
a  conflict  between  democracy  and  feudalism, 
between  peace  and  militarism,  between  the 
doctrine  of  industrial  development  by  work 
and  intelligence  and  the  doctrine  of  the  for- 
cible appropriation  of  the  fruits  of  the  labor 
of  others,  between  responsible  government 
and  imposed  government,  between  progress 
and  reaction,  between  the  acknowledgment  of 
the  obligation  of  international  law  and  the 
denial  of  its  superiority  to  expediency, 
between  all  that  has  been  accomplished  in 
the  spiritual  evolution  of  civilization  during 
the  last  hundred  and  fifty  years  and  the 
barbarism  of  a  conqueror  of  the  Middle 
Ages,  between  faith-keeping  and  faith-break- 
ing, between  Abraham  Lincoln  and  Napo- 
leon. On  the  concrete  side,  the  war  is  to 


78  Neutrality 

decide  whether  within  a  few  years  the  United 
States  will  have  to  fight  the  German  Empire, 
whether  the  Monroe  Doctrine  is  to  be  torn 
to  shreds  and  Brazil  seized  by  Germany, 
whether  for  our  physical  safety  it  will  be 
necessary  for  us  to  devote  a  very  large  part 
of  our  resources  to  the  creation  of  a  huge  navy 
and  a  vast  army,  whether  we  must  submit 
not  only  to  taxes  burdensome  to  an  unparal- 
lelled  degree,  but  also  to  the  diversion  of  a 
large  part  of  our  manhood  from  productive 
industry.  On  both  abstract  and  concrete 
grounds  it  would  be  impossible  for  us  to 
view  German  success  with  toleration. 

Few  Americans  would  be  willing  to  admit 
that  we  are  maintaining  neutrality  because 
of  fear.  The  nation  is  too  proud  and  too 
great  to  acknowledge  such  a  thing.  We  are 
also  too  intelligent  not  to  know  that  Ger- 
many cannot  in  this  war  destroy  the  British 
fleet,  and  that  so  long  as  the  British  fleet  is 
intact  Germany  is  impotent  to  do  us  military 
injury.  We  have  seen  what  Germany  has 
done  to  Belgium,  to  Poland,  to  Serbia,  and 


Neutrality  79 

to  Northern  France,  and  we  can  readily 
understand  how  fear  should  be  a  controlling 
influence  in  making  nations  like  Switzerland, 
Holland,  Denmark,  Norway,  Sweden,  Greece, 
and  Roumania  preserve  their  neutrality. 
Circumstances  will  very  probably  become  so 
insistent  that  even  fear  will  not  suffice  to 
prevent  some  of  these  countries,  notably 
Greece,  Roumania,  and  Holland,  from  ultim- 
ate intervention;  but  in  the  meantime  fear 
is  a  human  and  proper  reason  for  keeping 
them  out  of  the  war.  They  are  vulnerable 
to  the  terrorization  of  the  German  methods. 
We  in  America  are  not  vulnerable. 

The  issues  at  stake  in  this  war  are  so  huge 
that  it  would  be  puerile  to  say  that  they  are 
not  worth  the  cost  of  intervention  by  the 
United  States.  The  whole  future  course  of 
the  development  of  the  world,  of  which  we 
form  a  not  inconsiderable  unit,  is  at  issue. 
Moreover,  our  very  invulnerability,  due  to  our 
geographical  position  and  to  the  suprem- 
acy of  the  British  navy,  makes  the  cost  to 
us  of  intervention  controllable  by  ourselves 


8o  Neutrality 

and  not  by  Germany.  Were  we  in  the  war, 
it  would  be  wholly  for  us  to  decide  to  what 
extent  we  should  participate.  We  could  if 
we  wished  content  ourselves  with  a  merely 
passive  belligerency,  such  as  that  carried  on 
by  Japan  since  the  fall  of  Tsing  Tau,  at  the 
same  time  rendering  services  to  the  Entente 
by  the  mobilization  of  our  financial  and  in- 
dustrial resources.  Or  if,  on  the  other  hand, 
we  should  decide  to  undertake  an  active 
share  in  military  operations,  we  could  be 
assured  of  all  the  time  needful  to  organize, 
equip,  and  train  armies  of  such  size  as  we 
should  deem  advisable. 

The  selfish  considerations  of  money  profit 
are  totally  insufficient  to  justify  our  neutral- 
ity. Our  pride  should  be  too  great  to  allow 
us  to  take  all  the  advantage  and  suffer  none 
of  the  burden  of  the  war.  Our  virility,  our 
manhood,  should  forbid  us  to  be  willing  to 
skulk  behind  the  protection  of  Great  Britain 
and  France  as  we  are  doing.  We  know  that 
the  Entente  is  fighting  our  battle,  and  that 
if  it  is  beaten  we  shall  be  compelled  ourselves 


Neutrality  81 

to  fight  whether  we  want  to  or  not.  We 
cannot  plead  poverty  or  smallness  as  our 
excuse.  I  cannot  believe  any  considerable 
part  of  our  people  so  degraded  and  lacking  in 
the  conception  of  honor  as  to  wish  to  let  others 
fight  for  them  while  they  devote  themselves 
to  the  making  of  money.  Such  a  stand  is 
incompatible  with  the  American  character 
and  with  every  tradition  of  our  history.  It 
is  our  duty  to  be  supporters  of  civilization, 
not  its  emasculated  beneficiaries. 

The  one  remaining  possibility  of  justifying 
our  neutrality  is  the  assertion  that  we  can 
accomplish  more  good  as  a  neutral  than  as  a 
belligerent,  and  upon  examination  this  claim 
too  falls  to  pieces.  It  is  quite  true  that 
worthy  action  by  us  at  the  beginning  would 
probably  have  enabled  us  to  preserve  our 
neutrality  while  obtaining  advantages  for 
civilization  of  inestimable  worth.  The  lack 
of  vision,  the  timidity  and  possibly  the 
stupidity  of  our  Administration  prevented 
this  accomplishment,  and  the  opportunity  is 
forever  gone  from  us.  We  could  have  crys- 

6 


82  Neutrality 

tallized  not  only  the  opinion  of  our  own 
people  but  that  of  all  the  neutral  peoples  of 
the  world  against  the  German  assault  on 
civilization.  We  could  have  nipped  in  the 
bud  the  German  doctrine  of  frightfulness, 
and  prevented  all  calculated  commission  of 
atrocities.  We  could  have  made  it  early 
evident  that  ultimate  success  of  the  German 
purpose  was  impossible,  and  thus  not  only 
have  prevented  the  entry  into  the  war  of 
Turkey  and  Bulgaria,  but  have  made  Ger- 
many realize  that  the  longer  the  struggle 
lasted  the  worse  would  be  the  plight  of  the 
Central  Empires,  and  that  the  only  chance 
of  preserving  their  existing  imperium  lay 
in  an  immediate  peace  on  the  best  terms 
obtainable.  But  instead  of  this,  Mr.  Wilson 
maintained  a  long  silence,  ultimately  broken 
by  representations  based  entirely  on  national 
selfishness,  principally  money  selfishness, 
and  totally  ignoring  the  paramount  question 
of  the  demands  of  civilization.  The  Germans 
have  given  the  United  States  slap  after  slap 
in  the  face,  but  Mr.  Wilson  has  only  sput- 


Neutrality  83 

tered,  and  even  in  his  sputterings  has  com- 
plained only  of  the  affront  to  the  face  slapped, 
not  of  the  outrage  of  such  slappings  existing 
in  a  twentieth-century  world.  As  a  result, 
the  voice  of  America,  which  might  have 
inspired  respect,  is  now  regarded  only  with 
disdain,  and  all  chance  of  important  accom- 
plishment by  the  moral  force  of  our  Ad- 
ministration has  vanished.  This  pusillanimity 
and  short-sightedness  has  also  destroyed  all 
the  force  of  the  argument  at  first  so  often 
made  that  the  United  States  was  needed  at 
the  end  of  the  war  as  the  one  great  neutral 
to  settle  the  terms  of  peace.  We  no  longer 
have  any  influence  which  can  affect  these 
terms,  and  they  will  be  made  by  the  victori- 
ous Entente  Powers,  and  not  by  any  neutral. 
The  world  will  have  to  trust  to  the  wisdom 
and  restraint  of  men  like  Sir  Edward  Grey 
that  these  terms  be  such  as  to  insure  lasting 
peace,  not  to  the  guidance  of  America. 

Nor  is  there  any  truth  in  the  statement 
that  we  are  doing  more  to  aid  by  making 
munitions  as  a  neutral  than  we  could  do  as 


84  Neutrality 

a  belligerent.  There  has  been  only  a  partial 
mobilization  of  our  resources  for  this  purpose, 
induced  merely  by  the  desire  to  gain  profits. 
Were  we  in  the  war,  there  would  be  a  national 
patriotic  mobilization,  and  with  our  char- 
acteristic powers  of  organization  under  such 
stimulation  we  should  soon  be  turning  out 
ten  shells  where  to-day  we  are  producing  one. 
The  destination  of  these  munitions  would  be 
where  they  could  do  most  good,  and  they 
certainly  would  not  be  hoarded  by  us  to 
provide  for  our  own  future  needs  a  year  hence 
but  would  be  apportioned  to  the  troops 
needing  them  as  these  troops  were  ready  for 
action.  The  question  of  whether  these 
soldiers  were  Americans  or  belonged  to  one 
of  our  allies  would  be  of  minor  importance 
in  this  regard.  To  think  we  would  act 
otherwise  would  be  to  admit  that  we  are 
fools. 

No  one  now  fears  revolution  on  the  part 
of  the  hyphenate  if  we  go  to  war.  It  is  too 
thoroughly  discredited  to  count  except  so 
far  as  it  can  in  secret  hatch  criminal  plots 


Neutrality  85 

and  deal  assassin  blows.  It  will  never  come 
out  into  the  open. 

The  one  valid  argument  against  American 
intervention  is  that  it  would  prevent  the 
admirable  work  which  has  been  carried  on 
by  our  diplomatic  representatives  in  the  war- 
ring nations,  and  embarrass  the  adminis- 
tration of  our  charities  among  the  victims 
of  Germany.  However  unfortunate  this 
may  be,  it  cannot  for  a  moment  be  held  of 
sufficient  weight  to  counterbalance  the  reasons 
which  demand  that  we  should  intervene. 

It  is  of  the  highest  consequence  that  the 
American  people  should  recognize  the  fact 
that  neutralit}^  is  never  noble,  is  often  base 
and  cowardly,  in  this  case  is  soul-destroying, 
deadly  to  our  influence  and  reputation  abroad, 
and  to  our  pride  and  self-respect  at  home. 
The  very  fact  that  Mr.  Wilson  has  constantly 
assumed  that  neutrality  is  per  se  something 
admirable  has  in  the  past  led  many  Americans 
astray;  now  that  they  are  beginning  to  see 
the  shame  he  has  brought  upon  our  citizen- 
ship in  other  respects  they  are  also  perceiv- 


86  Neutrality 

ing  the  falsity  of  this  assumption.  What 
freeman  could  hesitate  in  choosing  between 
Constantine  of  Greece  and  the  noble  Veni- 
zelos?  Let  us  be  able  to  say  with  Rupert 
Brooke  who  last  spring  died  in  the 
in  the  flower  of  his  youthful  genius: 

And  Nobleness  walks  in  our  ways  again, 
And  we  have  come  into  our  heritage. 


THE  AMERICAN  LEGION 

DURING  our  Civil  War  there  were  tens 
of  thousands  of  Canadians  enlisted 
in  the  northern  armies.  The  assistance  of 
these  men  was  gratefully  accepted,  but  in  no 
case  was  it  possible  to  identify  or  distinguish 
what  they  did  as  the  accomplishment  of 
Canadians.  They  were  all  merged  into  the 
United  States  army,  and  became  merely 
units  of  the  different  United  States  regiments 
which  they  joined. 

In  this  war  in  like  manner  thousands  of 
Americans  have  enlisted  in  the  armies  of  the 
Entente.  There  is  hardly  a  Canadian  regi- 
ment which  has  not  in  it  a  sprinkling  of 
Americans;  Americans  gained  undying  glory 
in  the  heroic  Princess  Patricia  Canadian 
Light  Infantry;  they  are  scattered  all  through 
the  British  armies  and  are  found  in  the  armies 
of  France,  more  especially  in  the  famous 
87 


88          The  American  Legion 

Foreign  Legion  and  in  the  aviation  corps. 
Occasionally  some  conspicuous  happening, 
such  as  the  gallant  death  of  Johnny  Poe, 
brings  for  a  moment  to  the  notice  of  the 
world  the  presence  of  these  Americans  among 
the  fighting  men,  but  for  the  most  part  they 
are  entirely  merged  in  the  nationality  of  the 
forces  which  they  have  joined. 

Now  for  the  first  time  the  Canadian  author- 
ities, with  a  fine  courtesy  and  a  splendid  ap- 
preciation of  the  high  motives  which  have 
made  so  many  Americans  refuse  to  stay  pas- 
sive in  this  struggle  between  freedom  and 
tyranny,  have  permitted  the  organization 
of  a  battalion  of  the  Canadian  Overseas 
Forces  to  consist  in  its  personnel  both  of 
enlisted  men  and  officers  entirely  of  those  of 
United  States  origin.  This  battalion  is  now 
fully  organized  and  recruited,  and  it  will  be 
but  a  short  time  before  there  are  other  similar 
battalions.  These  men  are  known  as  the 
American  Legion. 

The  authorization  of  these  purely  Ameri- 
can forces  shows  both  a  confidence  in  the 


The  American  Legion          89 

bravery  and  ability  of  battalions  so  consti- 
tuted to  give  a  worthy  account  of  themselves, 
and  a  generous  willingness  that  they  may 
receive  as  Americans  full  credit  for  whatever 
they  are  able  to  do.  I  have  seen  these  men, 
many  of  them  veterans  of  the  Spanish  War 
and  the  Philippines  and  the  expeditions  to 
Cuba,  under  the  command  of  a  man  who 
has  served  in  both  the  army  and  the  navy 
of  the  United  States,  straight,  serious,  and 
earnest.  I  have  looked  in  their  eyes,  and 
I  have  no  fear  that  they  will  not  uphold 
the  traditions  of  American  soldiers. 

Upon  enlisting  these  men  take  an  oath  of 
allegiance  to  the  flag  under  which  they  are  to 
serve,  limited  in  time  to  the  duration  of  the 
war  and  six  months  thereafter.  After  the 
expiration  of  this  time,  they  are  free  from 
any  duty  or  obligation  to  the  British  Empire. 

I  cannot  but  think  that  when  it  becomes 
known  in  the  United  States  that  this  Ameri- 
can Legion  exists,  it  will  not  be  by  tens  but 
by  thousands  that  Americans  will  come  to 
Canada  to  offer  themselves  for  this  service. 


90          The  American  Legion 

However  blind  our  Administration  is  to  the 
light  of  these  high  times,  there  are  millions 
of  our  citizens  who  have  the  vision  to  see 
and  the  wit  to  understand  what  this  struggle 
means  for  the  world  and  for  civilization. 
They  know  that  in  the  face  of  a  cataclysm 
of  this  kind  it  is  childish  to  say  that  it  does 
not  concern  us,  and  cowardly  to  avoid 
paying  the  debt  which  we  owe  to  the  world. 

For  many  of  us  in  the  United  States, 
Canada  has  been  put  on  the  map  by  the 
action  taken  in  this  war.  The  obligation 
for  Canada  to  participate  was  only  a  moral 
one;  the  Canadian  government  is  free  and 
entirely  uncontrolled  by  the  government  of 
Great  Britain.  There  was  no  legal  require- 
ment that  a  single  Canadian  soldier  or  a 
single  Canadian  dollar  should  go  overseas 
to  the  relief  of  the  mother  country,  any  more 
than  that  a  United  States  man  or  dollar 
should  take  part.  But  the  moral  and  eco- 
nomic ties  that  bind  the  British  Empire  to- 
gether are  so  strong  that  there  was  not  a 
moment  of  hesitation.  The  men  in  control 


The  American  Legion         91 

of  affairs  knew  that  this  was  Canada's  war 
as  much  as  England's  war,  and  they  did  not 
delay  in  promising  Canadian  aid.  I  myself 
believe  that  it  is  the  United  States'  war  even 
more  than  it  is  Canada's  war,  because  we 
not  only  have  more  to  lose  if  Germany  should 
triumph,  but  our  greater  size  and  importance 
in  the  world  carry  with  them  greater  respon- 
sibilities and  greater  duties. 

There  can  be  no  red-blooded  American 
who  can  feel  other  than  admiration  and  re- 
spect for  Canada  and  the  splendid  way  Cana- 
dians have  come  forward  to  carry  their  share 
of  the  burden.  The  inspiration  of  seeing  a 
people  small  in  numbers  and  developed  re- 
sources boldly  throwing  themselves  into  this 
maelstrom  of  war  by  the  side  of  their  brothers 
must  needs  arouse  in  us  a  feeling  nearly  akin 
to  envy.  They  stood  not  upon  the  order  of 
their  going;  they  did  not  evert  and  extrude 
and  discuss ;  they  did  not  count  the  cost  or  the 
loss.  Their  empire,  their  world,  their  civi- 
lization, their  century  needed  them;  the 
answer  was  simple,  they  must  go,  and  they 


92          The  American  Legion 

have  gone  and  they  are  going  and  they  will 

go- 

What  wonder,  then,  that  with  this  noble 
example  of  courage  and  willingness  to  serve 
close  before  our  eyes,  many  of  our  citizens 
are  going  to  Canada  to  join  this  American 
Legion,  there  to  find  again  the  self-respect 
they  look  for  in  vain  in  Washington?  They 
are  welcomed  as  brothers;  from  the  moment 
they  set  foot  upon  Canadian  soil  their  ex- 
penses are  borne  by  the  tax-payers  of  Canada; 
they  receive  the  same  pay  as  the  native- 
born  Canadian  volunteer,  their  families  are 
entitled  to  the  same  allowances  and  the  same 
distribution  of  the  patriotic  funds  that  are 
being  raised  to  take  care  of  the  dependents 
of  the  Canadian  soldiers. 

The  Germans  love  to  say  that  these  men 
are  mercenaries,  that  they  are  fighting  for 
the  pay  that  they  receive.  Individualism 
is  almost  unknown  in  Germany,  and  the 
conception  of  a  man  reasoning  out  for  him- 
self his  duty  to  mankind  and  sacrificing  him- 
self to  his  ideals  of  what  he  ought  to  do  is 


The  American  Legion         93 

incomprehensible  to  those  who  have  for 
years  been  taught  to  obey  the  commands 
of  the  authorities  above  them.  But  we 
who  know  the  American  character  cannot  be 
told  that  the  Americans  who  make  up  this 
Legion  that  bears  our  name  are  in  it  because 
the  pay  of  a  Canadian  private  is  a  dollar  and 
ten  cents  a  day.  There  may  be  something 
of  the  spirit  of  adventure,  there  may  be  a 
curiosity  to  see  for  themselves  how  men  can 
comport  themselves  in  this  greatest  exploit  of 
history,  but  mostly  these  men  are  Canadian 
soldiers  because  they  have  seen  their  duty 
to  their  world  and  their  race  and  have  not 
shirked  it.  They  have  given  proof  of  a 
loftiness  of  individualism  that  in  the  end  is 
certain  to  triumph  over  an  autocracy,  no 
matter  how  orderly  and  efficient  it  may 
appear  to  be. 

No  law  can  be  made  in  the  United  States 
which  can  prevent  our  citizens  from  think- 
ing and  deciding  for  themselves.  The  only 
conceivable  circumstance  under  which  our 
government  could  prevent  our  eager  and 


94         The  American  Legion 

inspired  young  manhood  from  going  to 
Canada  and  under  the  British  flag  giving 
the  service  which  they  ought  to  be  giving 
under  their  own  would  be  a  universal  con- 
scription in  time  of  war.  Until  that  time 
comes,  I  and  every  other  American  citizen 
have  every  right  to  tell  our  fellows  of  the 
opportunity  to  serve  mankind  offered  by 
this  American  Legion  and  of  the  steps  to  be 
taken  to  become  a  member  of  it.  However 
much  it  may  displease  the  President  of  the 
United  States  to  see  these  men  going  abroad 
to  render  the  service  he  has  sought  to  escape, 
he  is  powerless  to  prevent  them  from  going, 
— just  as  powerless  as  he  is  to  prevent  me 
from  saying  these  things  as  loudly  and  as 
eloquently  as  I  know  how,  wherever  I  may 
be,  at  home  in  the  United  States,  or  where 
under  the  democratic  Canadian  flag  a  true 
and  proud  American  may  well  feel  even 
more  at  home  than  in  his  own  land  in  this 
January  of  the  year  1916. 


OUR  NATIONAL  CONSCIENCE 

PHERE  has  never  been  an  election  in  the 
*  United  States  so  important  as  that  of 
this  year.  It  will  make  it  clear  whether 
we  Americans  who  believe  that  at  heart  our 
nation  is  the  same  as  it  has  been  during  the 
years  of  its  history  are  right,  or  whether  truth 
lies  with  the  croakers  who  declare  that  with 
the  new  immigration  diluting  our  blood  and 
the  new  luxury  sapping  our  manhood  we 
have  ceased  to  be  the  America  of  old.  It 
will  prove  whether  we  have  lost  our  national 
conscience  and  our  national  soul. 

We  know  that  the  Great  War  is  a  plain 
struggle  between  might  and  right.  We  know 
that  the  Wilson  Administration  has  been 
afraid  to  choose  between  them.  If  the  people 
of  my  country  support  this  Administration, 
they  will  show  that  Mr.  Wilson  has  succeeded 
in  destroying  the  soul  of  his  country. 
95 


96       Our  National  Conscience 

Where  a  great  moral  issue  is  involved  it 
always  takes  time  to  make  the  mass  of  the 
people  see  it  and  understand  it.  It  took 
twenty  years  to  bring  the  people  to  a  point 
where  they  knew  that  the  Civil  War  had  to 
be  fought,  and  even  then  they  gasped  at  the 
temerity  of  Lincoln  in  issuing  the  Proclama- 
tion of  Emancipation  even  though  they  knew 
that  slavery  was  the  underlying  issue  of  the 
war.  They  stood  four  years  of  Buchanan 
just  as  we  are  standing  four  years  of  Wilson. 
But  the  people  would  have  no  more  of 
Buchanan,  and  if  they  are  the  same  people 
who  made  the  United  States  in  1860  they 
will  have  no  more  of  Wilson. 

If  we  are  men  and  not  sheep,  we  will  have 
no  more  of  Wilson.  If  we  have  red  blood 
rather  than  water  in  our  veins,  we  will  have 
no  more  of  him.  If  we  believe  in  the  prin- 
ciple of  democracy  and  that  it  is  worth 
maintaining  and  fighting  for  in  the  world, 
if  we  hold  that  our  citizenship  should  be 
an  aegis  of  protection  rather  than  a  badge  of 
shame,  if  we  insist  that  righteousness  and 


Our  National  Conscience      97 

moral  worths  are  more  to  be  desired  than 
wealth  and  temporary  self-indulgence,  we 
will  have  no  more  of  Wilson.  If  we  want 
to  be  able  to  qualify  for  something  higher 
than  the  guardians  of  a  harem,  we  will  be 
rid  of  Wilson.  If  we  have  any  appreciation 
of  shame,  any  dislike  of  national  degradation, 
any  understanding  of  national  honor,  we  will 
throw  Wilson  out  of  the  office  he  has  dese- 
crated. If  the  spirit  of  1776  and  of  1861  is 
not  dead  in  our  bosoms,  we,  the  hundred 
million  of  Americans  of  1916,  will  elect  some 
Lincoln  to  undo  the  shame  of  this  Buchanan 
of  to-day. 

Must  we  wait  for  the  list  of  our  shames 
to  become  even  longer  before  we  sweep  the 
bloody  mist  from  before  our  eyes  and  see 
clearly?  Have  not  our  souls  been  seared 
enough  by  the  branding  flame  of  Belgium, 
of  Mexico,  of  the  Lusitania  ?  Let  every 
man  from  the  Pacific  to  the  Atlantic  who 
loves  America  for  what  it  has  been  raise  up 
his  voice  and  shout  it  abroad  that  we  will 
have  no  more  of  Wilson.  Let  such  a  cry  of 


98       Our  National  Conscience 

indignation  arise  that  it  shall  call  the  very 
ghosts  of  our  ancestors  forth  from  their 
graves  to  see  that  the  sons  whom  they  have 
begotten  carry  in  their  veins  the  heroic  blood 
of  their  fathers: 

Dishonor  not  your  mothers ;  now  attest 
That  those  whom  you  call  fathers  did  beget  you; 
Be  copy  now  to  men  of  grosser  mold 
And  teach  them  how  to  war. 

Alas  for  my  country  if  it  has  lost  its  soul! 
But  until  next  November  shall  prove  me  a 
liar,  I  deny  it,  I  deny  it,  and  again  I  deny  it. 


PEACE  WITH  THE  GERMAN 
REPUBLIC 

I\ /I  ANY  observers  believe  that  the  end  of 
*  the  war  will  be  brought  about  by 
revolution  in  Germany  and  Austria-Hungary 
rather  than  by  the  advance  of  the  troops  of 
the  Allies  into  the  territory  of  the  Central 
Empires.  Such  revolution  would  of  course 
be  the  result  of  the  military  losses  and  eco- 
nomic hardships  of  the  Teutons,  and  would 
be  a  victory  for  the  Entente  just  as  much  as  a 
passage  of  the  Rhine.  Almost  every  student 
of  the  situation  is  convinced  that  even  should 
revolution  not  be  a  condition  precedent  to 
the  allied  victory,  it  is  certain  to  follow  such 
a  victory.  It  must  happen,  because  it  is 
the  only  practicable  method  of  achieving  the 
greatest  purpose  of  the  war,  the  democrati- 
zation of  the  Central  Empires  and  rendering 
them  thereby  immune  to  militarism  and 
99 


ioo  Peace  with  the 

no  longer  a  menace  to  the  world.  There 
cannot  be  real  peace  so  long  as  the  dynasties 
of  Hapsburg  and  Hohenzollern  exist. 

Had  there  been  for  the  last  half-century  a 
free  press  in  these  empires,  these  dynasties 
would  long  since  have  fallen.  The  possibility 
of  duping  the  people  so  long  lay  only  in  the 
power  of  keeping  them  ignorant;  the  inborn 
impulses  toward  freedom  make  it  impossible 
to  keep  a  populace  that  is  informed  and  not 
illiterate  content  with  despotism. 

Such  a  freedom  of  the  press  would  like- 
wise have  made  it  clear  to  the  people  that 
even  should  the  ambitions  of  the  German 
war  lords  be  completely  successful,  no  benefit 
to  the  people  in  any  way  commensurate  with 
the  cost  of  the  war  could  result.  Even 
should  Germany  succeed  in  establishing  a 
hegemony  over  Europe,  with  close  commer- 
cial relations  of  the  territory  stretching  from 
the  Belgian  North  Sea  through  the  Central 
Empires,  through  the  Balkans,  through 
Turkey  and  Asia  Minor  to  the  Persian  Gulf, 
wherein  would  Hans  and  Fritz  who  are  spend- 


German  Republic  i 

ing  their  blood  and  their  savings  in  the  at- 
tempt to  accomplish  this  dream  be  better 
off?  No  indemnities  could  by  any  possi- 
bility be  imposed  upon  a  vanquished  Entente 
which  could  reimburse  Germany  for  her 
expenditures,  no  trade  advantages  which 
would  follow  could  make  existence  easier 
for  living  Hans  and  Fritz,  nothing  can  bring 
dead  Hans  and  dead  Fritz  back  to  life  again. 
The  high  Junker  lords,  the  great  manufac- 
turers, bankers,  and  ship-owners,  would  doubt- 
less profit  hugely  in  wealth,  but  not  Hans 
and  Fritz.  And  where  the  former  are  but 
one,  Hans  and  Fritz  are  a  thousand. 

To-day  even  these  beneficiaries  of  the  Pan- 
German  dream  recognize  that  it  is  but  a  dream 
and  can  never  be  turned  into  reality.  Hans 
and  Fritz  do  not  yet  realize  either  its  impos- 
sibility or  that  even  if  it  could  be  done  they 
would  be  no  better  off,  but  that  all  the  profit 
would  go  to  their  masters.  Once  Hans  and 
Fritz  open  their  eyes  and  understand,  there 
will  be  an  end  to  this  war  and  with  it  an 
end  to  Hapsburgs  and  Hohenzollerns.  The 


102  Peace  with  the 

length  of  the  war  depends  upon  the  intelli- 
gence of  Hans  and  Fritz,  and  how  much  more 
bloodshed  and  starvation  must  be  inflicted 
upon  them  before  they  will  learn  to  see. 

In  spite  of  the  endeavor  of  the  German 
authorities  to  keep  Hans  and  Fritz  in  ignor- 
ance and  to  keep  any  complaints  which  they 
may  make  from  reaching  the  ears  of  the 
outer  world,  evidences  are  multiplying  that 
the  seeds  of  revolution  in  Germany  are  fast 
sprouting.  At  the  outset  of  the  war  the 
socialists  were  regarded  as  the  danger  point, 
and  it  is  notorious  how  these  socialists  were 
impressed  into  the  most  dangerous  positions. 
The  effort  was  made  not  only  to  exterminate 
them  as  the  Turks  have  exterminated  the 
Armenians,  but  with  a  truly  Satanic  cunning 
to  use  their  deaths  to  bolster  up  the  power 
of  the  masters  who  condemned  them.  It  is 
not  likely  that  figures  will  ever  be  obtainable 
to  show  the  comparative  losses  of  the  social- 
ists and  the  rest  of  the  population,  but  every- 
thing indicates  that  the  war  lords  have 
made  them  the  first  and  heaviest  sufferers. 


German  Republic  103 

Now  there  is  arising  in  Germany  a  crop  of 
republicans,  quite  distinct  from  the  old  social- 
ists. They  offer  the  people  much  more 
prospect  of  accomplishment  than  could  the 
older  Socialism.  It  was  possible  for  the 
latter  to  exist  to  a  large  extent  along  with  a 
dominant  absolutism,  and  much  of  the  lauded 
efficiency  of  the  German  Government  has 
been  due  to  its  practice  of  an  imposed  and 
limited  socialism  upon  the  proletariat.  It  is 
unable  to  dominate  the  new  republicanism, 
which  is  in  its  nature  incompatible  with  the 
Junker  autocracy. 

Each  high  explosive  shell  that  kills  soldiers 
of  the  Kaiser  is  making  republicans.  Each 
pfennig  added  to  the  price  of  food,  each  drop 
in  the  exchange  value  of  the  mark,  is  making 
republicans.  The  passage  of  the  Rhine  by 
the  troops  of  Papa  Joffre  will  make  repub- 
licans. The  only  question  is  whether 
enough  republicans  will  have  been  made 
before  the  Rhine  is  passed  to  end  the  war. 
Nothing  can  be  more  certain  than  that  there 
will  be  a  republican  Germany,  and  that  it  is 


104  Peace  with  the 

only  with  this  new-born  republic  that  terms 
of  settlement  can  be  made  which  the  world 
can  accept  and  which  will  mean  a  lasting 
peace.  This  war  will  end  once  for  all  the 
anachronism  of  militaristic  oligarchies  or 
dynasties.  So  soon  as  any  of  the  few  auto- 
cracies which  will  survive  this  war  begin 
to  show  symptoms  of  aggressive  militarism, 
they  will  be  abolished  before  they  have  a 
chance  to  set  the  peaceful  democracies  of  the 
world  ablaze.  This  is  the  great  lesson  of  the 
last  two  years.  It  is  to  teach  it  that  men 
have  died  by  millions.  We  who  survive 
must  see  to  it  that  their  deaths  have  not 
been  in  vain. 

Again  and  again  it  must  be  repeated,  that 
history  teaches  that  democracies  can  be 
trusted  not  to  initiate  wars  of  aggression, 
that  autocracies  cannot  be  trusted.  It  is 
for  this  truth  that  we  fight ;  it  is  because  this 
is  truth  that  we  shall  win. 

The  end  of  the  war  must  mean  the  end  of 
the  imperial  dynasties  of  the  Central  Empires 
or  the  war  will  not  be  ended  in  fact.  And 


German  Republic  105 

this  fall  of  Teutonic  dynasties  will  carry  with 
it  an  omen  that  will  be  thoroughly  understood 
by  Slavic  and  Mongolian  dynasties.  Other- 
wise it  will  not  be  peace  but  merely  a  truce 
which  will  result. 


CANADIAN  FRIENDSHIP 

JV/l  Y  attention  was  recently  called  to  an 
*  ^  *  editorial  in  a  Philadelphia  paper  en- 
titled "Canadian  Bitterness,"  in  which  it 
was  stated  that  American  travelers  in  Canada 
have  found  that  their  country,  its  government, 
and  its  people  are  emphatically  unpopular, 
and  that  this  hostility  centers  in  Toronto.  As 
an  American  who  for  some  years  has  lived 
in  Toronto,  and  who  assuredly  has  a  better 
opportunity  of  judging  of  such  sentiments 
than  have  casual  tourists,  I  wish  categori- 
cally to  deny  the  truth  of  such  assertions. 

There  undoubtedly  was  a  time  not  many 
years  ago  when  the  greater  opportunities, 
successes,  and  luxuries  which  the  United 
States  then  offered  caused  a  certain  amount 
of  envy  and  jealousy  which  showed  itself 
in  spiteful  sayings  and  cutting  remarks. 
With  the  recent  broadening  and  develop- 
106 


Canadian  Friendship         107 

ment  of  Canadian  life,  this  has  largely  passed 
away,  although  a  few  instances  of  it  were 
revived  at  the  time  of  the  reciprocity  cam- 
paign of  1911  by  the  foolish  and  widely 
quoted  remarks  of  Champ  Clark,  W.  H. 
Taft  and  others, — remarks  intended  only 
for  home  consumption  and  not  meant  for 
circulation  in  Canada. 

Since  the  war  began,  I  have  been  greatly 
impressed  by  the  moderation  of  the  expres- 
sions of  Canadians  in  regard  to  the  course  of 
the  United  States.  They  have  been  much 
more  ready  to  find  excuses  for  our  failures 
to  respond  to  the  obligations  of  the  Hague 
Conventions  and  of  common  humanity  than 
have  I  or  others  of  the  millions  of  Americans 
who  feel  as  I  do.  It  would  of  course  be 
impossible  that  Canada,  which  is  paying  its 
debt  to  civilization  in  blood  and  treasure, 
should  not  feel  sorrow  that  we  in  the  United 
States,  whose  interests  in  the  preservation  of 
democratic  government  are  fundamentally 
the  same,  should  not  be  imbued  with  the 
same  spirit  of  service  which  is  recreating  the 


io8         Canadian  Friendship 

soul  of  Canada.  The  people  of  Canada  know, 
just  as  we  Americans  know,  that  the  Entente 
nations  are  fighting  the  battle  of  the  United 
States  as  well  as  their  own,  and  they  think  as 
we  think  that  it  is  selfish  and  unworthy  that 
we  should  be  taking  all  and  giving  nothing. 
The  real  reason  why  Canadians  are  far 
less  bitter  against  the  Wilson  Administra- 
tion than  are  the  truest  Americans  is  that 
they  know  that  the  war  does  not  need  the 
United  States;  we  on  the  other  hand  know 
that  the  United  States  does  need  the  war  if 
the  soul  of  our  country  is  not  to  be  destroyed 
and  if  we  are  to  learn  that  sacrifice  and  ser- 
vice in  the  cause  of  mankind  will  go  farther  to 
accomplish  true  greatness  in  a  nation  than 
selfishness  and  the  open  worship  of  Mammon 
as  the  greatest  of  the  gods. 


J'ACCUSE 

TTHE  greatest  tragedies  of  this  war  have 
*  been  the  tragedy  of  a  nation,  Germany, 
the  tragedy  of  a  people,  the  Belgians,  and 
the  tragedy  of  a  man,  Woodrow  Wilson. 
The  time  has  come  when  the  people  of  the 
United  States  should  no  longer  consent  to 
bear  this  last  tragedy  upon  their  shoulders. 

If  there  be  any  truth  in  the  parable  of  the 
talents,  it  will  be  hard  for  the  people  of  our 
nation  and  our  world  to  forgive  Mr.  Wilson. 
He  has  had  the  greatest  opportunity  ever 
offered  to  any  man  in  history;  the  fact  that 
he  has  buried  his  talents  instead  of  using 
them  has  caused  the  world  unspeakable 
suffering  and  injury. 

The  people  have  been  misled  as  to  Mr. 

Wilson  because  they  have  listened  to  him; 

because  they  have  taken  his  words  at  their 

face  value.    For  instance,  in  an  address  to 

109 


i  io  J'  Accuse 

the  members  of  the  Grand  Army  of  the  Re- 
public on  September  30,  1915,  he  used  words 
which  are  in  accord  with  the  best  tradition 
and  the  highest  conception  of  duty  of  the 
nation.  He  said: 

For  my  own  part  I  would  not  be  proud  of 
the  extraordinary  physical  development  of  this 
country,  of  its  extraordinary  development  in 
material  wealth  and  financial  power,  did  I  not 
believe  that  the  people  of  the  United  States 
wished  all  of  this  power  devoted  to  ideal  ends. 
There  have  been  other  nations  as  rich  as  we; 
there  have  been  other  nations  as  powerful ;  there 
have  been  other  nations  as  spirited;  but  I  hope 
that  we  shall  never  forget  that  we  created  this  nation, 
not  to  serve  ourselves,  but  to  serve  mankind.  .  .  . 

I  hope  I  may  say  without  even  an  implication 
of  criticism  upon  any  other  great  people  in  the 
world  that  it  has  always  seemed  to  me  that  the 
people  of  the  United  States  wished  to  be  regarded 
as  devoted  to  the  promotion  of  particular  prin- 
ciples of  human  right.  The  United  States  was 
founded,  not  to  provide  free  homes,  but  to  assert 
human  rights. 

This  flag  meant  a  great  enterprise  of  the 
human  spirit.  Nobody,  no  large  bodies  of  men, 
in  the  time  that  flag  was  first  set  up,  believed 
with  a  very  firm  belief  in  the  efficacy  of  democ- 


J'  Accuse  in 

racy.  Do  you  realize  that  only  so  long  ago  as 
the  American  Revolution  democracy  was  re- 
garded as  an  experiment  in  the  world,  and  we 
were  regarded  as  rash  experimenters?  But  we 
not  only  believed  in  it;  we  showed  that  our  belief 
was  well  founded  and  that  a  nation  as  powerful 
as  any  in  the  world  could  be  erected  upon  the 
will  of  the  people;  that,  indeed,  there  was  a 
power  in  such  a  nation  that  dwelt  in  no  other 
nation  unless  also  in  that  nation  the  spirit  of 
the  people  prevailed.  .  .  . 

So  I  stand  here  not  to  welcome  you  to  the 
nation's  capital  as  if  I  were  your  host,  but  merely 
to  welcome  you  to  your  own  capital,  because  I 
am,  and  am  proud  to  be,  your  servant.  I  hope 
I  shall  catch,  as  I  hope  we  shall  all  catch,  from 
the  spirit  of  this  occasion  a  new  consecration  to 
the  high  duties  of  American  citizenship. 

These  are  noble  words,  addressed  to  men 
who  were  not  too  proud  to  fight  nobly  for  a 
noble  cause  more  than  fifty  years  ago,  how- 
ever much  since  that  time  political  chicanery 
may  have  degraded  the  Grand  Army  of  the 
Republic.  They  accord  with  other  words 
spoken  by  Mr.  Wilson  before  his  election  as 
President,  and  as  an  American  citizen  I  am 
proud  to  believe  that  unless  the  American 


ii2  J'  Accuse 

people  had  become  convinced  that  he  held 
such  views  and  was  prepared  to  carry  them 
out  his  election  would  have  been  impossible. 
I  cannot  see  how  there  can  be  any  American 
worthy  of  the  name  who  can  fail  to  endorse 
them  without  restriction  or  reservation. 

But  when  it  came  to  making  effective  the 
purport  of  these  words  and  to  taking  action 
which  should  prove  that  he  was  prepared  in 
deed  as  in  speech  to  make  them  fruitful,  Mr. 
Wilson  has  failed  so  utterly  and  so  signally 
that  it  is  impossible  to  comprehend  how  he 
could  have  had  the  audacity  on  September 
30,  1915,  to  utter  them,  having  already  de- 
monstrated that  he  regards  them  as  mere 
platitudes  and  catchwords  to  be  used  for 
political  effect.  He  assumed  the  presidency 
of  a  nation  held  by  the  world  in  high  esteem 
as  embodying  more  than  any  other  the  high 
ideals  of  which  he  prates;  he  has  made  it 
to-day  a  nation  regarded  by  foreign  nations 
merely  with  contempt — a  pitying  contempt 
on  the  part  of  England  and  France  and  such 
nations  as  are  bleeding  to  preserve  for  the 


y  Accuse  113 

world  the  ideals  which  we  first  established; 
a  sneering  contempt  on  the  part  of  Germany 
which  is  convinced  that  we  will  submit  to 
any  insults  and  treat  as  scraps  of  paper  any 
obligations  rather  than  incur  the  burden  of 
suffering  and  of  debt  incident  to  war. 

I  assume  that  I  am  addressing  the  intel- 
ligent majority  of  our  people  who  have  al- 
ready made  up  their  minds  as  to  which  side 
must  win  the  European  War  if  the  advance 
of  the  world  is  not  to  meet  a  serious  setback. 
No  man  with  any  power  of  analysis  can  read 
the  thesis  of  Mr.  James  M.  Beck  and  the 
work  of  the  anonymous  author  of  JJ Accuse 
without  knowing  beyond  doubt  that  on 
Germany  rests  the  responsibility  for  the  war. 
No  man  with  any  humanity  can  read  the 
report  of  the  Bryce  Commission  and  the 
daily  papers  without  knowing  that  Germany 
has  adopted  methods  of  war  so  barbarous 
that  they  would  have  been  regarded  as  fan- 
tasies of  a  diseased  imagination  had  they 
been  foretold  two  years  ago.  No  man  with 
any  vision  can  fail  to  realize  that  the  purpose 


ii4  J'  Accuse 

of  Germany  is  to  establish  a  hegemony  over 
Europe  of  her  dynastic  autocracy,  and  that 
this  is  merely  the  preliminary  necessary 
step  to  the  seizure  of  Brazil  and  other  non- 
European  countries  so  long  coveted  by  her. 
No  American  with  any  knowledge  of  world 
politics  can  fail  to  understand  that  German 
victory  means  that  at  no  distant  date  the 
United  States  will  have  to  wage  war  with 
Germany  or  surrender  all  claim  to  be  a  nation 
the  equal  among  other  great  nations,  and 
that,  unless  we  are  far  stronger  than  we  now 
are,  Germany  will  be  able  to  collect  from  us 
the  billions  which  her  campaigns  have  cost. 

However  much  the  American  people  may 
feel  that  they  have  been  shamed  by  the 
failure  to  give  protection  to  American  lives, 
honor,  and  interests  in  Mexico,  however  much 
they  may  be  convinced  that  it  has  not  been 
as  a  servant  of  the  people  but  as  the  head  of 
a  political  party  that  Mr.  Wilson  has  been 
conducting  many  of  their  interests  and  ar- 
ranging his  Cabinet  and  the  incumbents  of 
offices  within  his  bestowal,  it  is  not  by  these 


J'  Accuse  1 15 

matters  that  he  will  be  judged  by  history. 
It  is  his  conduct  of  American  affairs  in  rela- 
tion to  the  Great  War  which  is  of  governing 
importance;  everything  else  sinks  into  com- 
parative insignificance. 

When  the  war  broke  out,  it  found  the 
American  people  benumbed  at  its  horror, 
overwhelmed  at  the  hugeness  of  the  cataclysm. 
The  people  were  only  waiting  for  the  inspired 
voice  of  a  great  leader  to  direct  them  along 
a  course  worthy  of  themselves  and  the  needs 
of  the  crisis.  Party  interests  were  forgot- 
ten; we  were  one  people,  anxious  "not  to 
serve  ourselves,  but  to  serve  mankind." 
And  not  only  the  American  people  looked  to 
Mr.  Wilson,  but  all  the  nations  of  the  world 
not  involved  in  the  conflict  looked  to  the 
United  States,  the  greatest  among  them,  for 
guidance  in  the  course  which  they  should 
pursue,  for  a  leadership.  Had  Mr.  Wilson 
acted  worthily  he  could  have  led  into  the 
service  of  mankind  not  only  his  own  people 
but  half  of  all  the  people  of  the  world. 

Mr.  Wilson  began  by  his  infamous  advice 


ii6  y  Accuse 

to  the  American  people  to  be  neutral  in  deed 
and  thought,  to  try  to  think  that  the  matter 
did  not  concern  us.  A  nobler  President,  Mon- 
roe, called  on  us  not  to  be  neutral  in  thought 
but  to  give  our  full  sympathy  to  Greece 
struggling  for  freedom  in  1823.  Everyone 
now  knows,  every  intelligent  person  knew 
at  the  time,  that  to  be  neutral  in  thought  at 
such  a  crisis  proved  a  man  a  fool  or  a  coward. 
The  mere  idea  of  an  American  president 
calling  upon  the  American  people  to  be 
neutral  in  thought  when  the  very  foundations 
upon  which  our  nation  has  been  erected  were 
being  attacked,  when  a  calculated  endeavor 
was  being  made  to  destroy  the  essentials  of 
that  democracy,  the  success  of  which  Mr. 
Wilson  so  glibly  extols,  is  enough  to  make 
any  true  American  sick  with  shame.  Us 
neutral  in  thought,  when  innocent  Belgium 
was  being  devastated  by  its  sworn  protector 
as  never  country  was  desolated  since  the  ear- 
lier barbarians  swept  down  from  the  North! 
Us  neutral  in  thought  when  innocent  women, 
not  by  ones  but  by  hundreds,  were  being 


J'  Accuse  117 

violated,  when  innocent  civilians,  not  by 
tens  but  by  thousands,  were  being  murdered ! 
Us  neutral  in  thought,  when  these  things 
were  being  done,  not  by  untutored  savages 
upon  equally  backward  victims  in  the  fast- 
nesses of  Central  Asia  or  in  the  wilds  of 
Borneo,  but  upon  a  people  as  civilized  and 
as  law-abiding  as  ourselves!  Us  neutral  in 
thought,  while  the  attempt  was  being  made 
to  extend  and  make  supreme  in  the  world 
a  dynastic  imperialism  which  is  to-day  a 
complete  anachronism,  and  to  destroy  utterly 
and  forever  the  democracies  of  Europe  which 
have  arisen  as  a  result  of  the  success  of 
our  own  great  experiment!  Us  neutral  in 
thought,  when  the  only  excuse  of  the  devasta- 
tor was  an  alleged  superiority  over  all  other 
peoples  of  the  world,  a  superiority  manifested 
in  peace  by  intolerant  braggadocio  and 
brutal  manners,  and  in  war  by  refinements 
of  cruelty  hitherto  unsuspected  and  the  ap- 
palling doctrine  of  f rightf ulness !  It  were 
better  that  the  people  of  the  United  States 
should  perish  from  off  the  earth  than  that 


n8  J'  Accuse 

at  such  a  time  they  should  be  neutral  in 
thought. 

Nor  was  there  any  internal  danger  in  the 
country  to  be  avoided  by  such  cowardly 
personal  neutrality.  Selfishness  could  not 
dictate  such  advice.  Not  only  was  there 
at  the  time  no  pro-German  propaganda  such 
as  has  since  then  been  so  carefully  cultivated 
by  agents  of  the  Prussian  autocracy,  but 
under  a  wise  and  patriotic  leadership  there 
never  would  have  been  such  a  propaganda. 
If  the  official  Government  of  the  United 
States  had  made  it  clear  that  in  its  desire  to 
serve  mankind  it  shuddered  at  the  deeds  of 
Germany  as  well  as  at  her  ambitions,  if  the 
President  of  the  United  States  had  taken  a 
firm  stand  for  world  ideals  based  upon  the 
principles  of  humanity  and  the  welfare  of  the 
human  race  as  well  as  upon  the  need  to  save 
democratic  government  in  the  world,  the 
hideous  specter  of  pro- Germanism  would 
never  have  raised  its  head  in  the  country. 
If  at  the  outset  the  evil  had  been  branded 
as  what  it  was,  no  considerable  part  of  the 


J'  Accuse  119 

people  could  have  been  led  astray  into  tolera- 
tion of  it.  The  Germans  in  the  United 
States  themselves  would  have  been  compelled 
at  once  to  visualize  the  difference  in  the 
ideals  of  the  country  from  which  they  came 
and  this  new  land  of  ours,  and  would  no  more 
have  given  their  aid  to  Germany  than  would 
the  expatriates  of  the  Revolution  of  1848. 

The  existing  cancer  of  the  hyphenate 
in  our  land,  a  cancer  sedulously  nourished 
by  Prussian  emissaries  and  Prussian  gold, 
is  due  entirely  to  Mr.  Wilson's  attitude. 
The  truth  of  this  statement  is  clearly  shown 
by  the  fact  that  in  Canada,  where  the 
proportion  of  inhabitants  of  German  birth 
or  parentage  is  even  greater  than  in  the 
United  States,  there  is  no  pro- Germanism. 
The  inspiration  there  of  a  government  with 
vision  urging  the  people  to  accept  the  sacri- 
fices necessary  for  performing  the  duties 
imposed  upon  them  by  their  twentieth  cen- 
tury civilization  prevented  any  but  isolated 
instances  of  pro-Germanism  from  mani- 
festing themselves.  Pro-Germanism  was 


I2O  J'Accuse 

recognized  as  the  shameful  thing  it  is,  and 
in  Canada  it  is  neither  safe,  respectable,  nor 
decent.  But  the  number  of  German-born 
who  have  had  to  be  interned  is  negligible, 
and  the  number  who  have  volunteered  for  the 
army  is  magnificent.  Mr.  Wilson's  differ- 
ent course  not  only  has  not  served  mankind 
but  has  been  the  direct  cause  of  the  failure 
of  the  United  States  to  show  itself  homoge- 
neous. He  has  torn  his  own  country  asunder 
when  more  than  ever  we  needed  unitedness. 
The  partial  success  of  the  unofficial  war 
which  Germany  is  waging  upon  us  in  fo- 
menting strikes,  burning  our  factories,  and 
blowing  up  our  legitimate  industries  is  entirely 
the  result  of  Mr.  Wilson's  policy. 

Even  more  evil  in  effect  than  this  act  of 
commission  have  been  Mr.  Wilson's  acts  of 
omission.  The  United  States  is  a  signatory 
to  the  conventions  of  The  Hague  Tribunal  of 
1907,  by  which  it  was  sought  to  reduce  to  the 
concrete  of  written  form  part  of  the  vague 
obligations  known  as  international  law,  and 
to  obtain  for  them  a  definite  sanction  by  the 


J'  Accuse  121 

approving  nations.  It  is  perfectly  true  that 
the  United  States  specifically  stipulated  that 
its  adherence  to  these  conventions  should 
not  require  it  to  intervene  in  any  European 
war,  and  that  the  invasion  of  Belgium  was 
not  of  necessity  a  casus  belli  for  this  country 
as  it  was  for  Great  Britain.  Furthermore, 
it  may  be  plausibly  argued  that  the  partici- 
pation in  the  war  of  nations  which  have  not 
adopted  these  conventions  makes  it  techni- 
cally possible  to  claim  that  the  United  States 
was  not  false  to  its  obligations  when  it  failed 
to  protest.  But  at  such  a  time  there  should 
have  been  no  appeal  to  technicalities,  no 
endeavor  to  escape  from  the  duty  contem- 
plated and  intended  to  be  imposed  by  The 
Hague  Conventions.  It  is  only  by  quibbling 
that  even  the  technical  obligation  of  the 
United  States  can  be  avoided.  Montenegro 
may  not  have  adopted  certain  of  these  Hague 
conventions;  is  that  any  reason  why  Belgium 
should  not  be  protected  against  German 
invasion  at  least  by  the  moral  support  of  a 
United  States  protest? 


122  J' Accuse 

Underlying  and  infinitely  greater  than 
any  treaty  obligations  was  the  duty  of  the 
United  States  to  make  a  protest  based  on 
the  broadest  grounds  of  humanity  and  inter- 
national safety,  based  on  our  duty  "not  to 
serve  ourselves,  but  to  serve  mankind,"  as 
Mr.  Wilson  has  so  admirably  phrased  it. 
Here  was  an  occasion  where  it  lay  in  his 
power  at  no  cost  to  his  nation  to  have  done 
more  to  serve  mankind  than  has  ever  before 
been  open  to  any  man  in  history.  The  spirit 
of  these  Hague  conventions,  which  is  the 
spirit  of  civilization,  demanded  action  by  us, 
action  that  clearly  need  not  have  been  military 
intervention,  but  just  as  clearly  should  have 
been  an  earnest  protest  against  the  flagrant 
violation  of  these  conventions.  This  duty 
Mr.  Wilson  entirely  failed  to  perform. 

Had  this  protest,  which  our  honor  and  our 
obligation  "to  serve  mankind"  demanded, 
been  duly  made,  its  effect  would  have  been 
of  incalculable  value.  It  would  have  con- 
solidated the  opinion  of  the  neutral  nations 
and  brought  them  to  a  realization  of  their 


J'  Accuse  123 

own  duties.  While  perhaps  it  would  have 
been  too  late  to  prevent  the  violation  of  Bel- 
gium, it  would  undoubtedly  have  prevented 
most  of  the  horrors  which  took  place  not 
only  there  but  in  other  conquered  territory, 
in  Serbia  and  in  Poland.  It  would  have  pre- 
vented the  institution  of  the  doctrine  of 
frightfulness,  which  Germany  adopted  step 
by  step  when  each  successive  flagrancy  failed 
to  elicit  the  storm  of  protest  which  it  merited. 
It  would  have  forced  the  whole  neutral 
world,  which  had  its  gaze  fixed  upon  the 
United  States,  to  an  immediate  recognition 
of  the  rights  and  wrongs  of  the  conflict.  It 
would  have  made  it  evident  that  ultimate 
defeat  of  the  German  cause  was  inevitable, 
and  would  have  made  impossible  the  entrance 
into  the  war  on  the  side  of  Germany  of  any 
other  nations.  It  would  have  concentrated 
the  whole  force  of  world  opinion  against 
Germany,  and  made  it  necessary  that  the 
war  should  have  been  ended  in  the  winter 
of  1914-1915. 

It  is  almost  inconceivable  that  Germany 


124  J'Accuse 

would  have  refused  to  heed  such  a  protest, 
backed  as  it  would  have  been  by  the  weight 
of  practically  the  whole  world  outside  of  the 
warring  nations.  The  danger  would  have 
been  too  great  that  the  deliberate  hostile 
judgment  of  the  United  States  and  the  other 
neutrals  would  be  turned  into  hostile  action. 
But  even  if  the  madness  of  Germany  had 
proved  greater  than  seems  possible  and  we 
had  been  drawn  into  the  war,  we  should  have 
been  injured  only  in  our  pocket-books.  To 
do  us  physical  injury  Germany  would  have 
been  impotent,  and  our  participation  would 
have  been  only  to  the  extent  desired  by  us. 
The  spectacle  of  a  great  nation  altruistically 
entering  a  war  from  which  it  could  gain  no 
advantage  except  the  moral  benefit  of  the 
inspiration  of  high  deeds  for  the  service  of 
mankind,  would  have  promoted  civilization 
more  than  any  event  in  history. 

Instead  of  a  protest  against  Germany, 
Mr.  Wilson's  first  protest,  in  December,  1914, 
was  against  Great  Britain,  and  was  based 
wholly  upon  financial  considerations.  The 


J'  Accuse  125 

stimulus  to  American  trade  caused  by  the  ne- 
cessities of  the  Entente  Powers  had  already 
resulted  in  a  great  increase  in  the  volume  of 
sales  to  Europe,  these  sales  being  made  at 
enormous  profits.  But  not  content  with  this, 
Mr.  Wilson  sought  that  in  addition  to  these 
profits  such  American  interests  as  were  not 
above  dealing  with  Germany  should  have  an 
opportunity  to  do  so  at  the  war  scale  of  profits. 
Already  America  had  begun  to  fatten  upon  the 
miseries  of  Europe;  this  note  of  Mr.  Wilson 
gave  notice  that  the  United  States  Govern- 
ment was  prepared  to  aid  in  squeezing  usury 
out  of  the  gaping  wounds  of  the  nations 
overseas.  No  distinction  was  made  between 
incidental  profit  in  helping  the  right  side 
and  indiscriminate  profit  from  both  sides. 
It  resulted,  as  of  necessity  it  must  have  re- 
sulted, in  encouraging  the  selfishness  of 
United  States  business,  and  repressing  the 
nobler  feeling  of  the  American  people  that 
at  such  a  time  it  was  utterly  unworthy  of 
our  traditions  and  the  soul  of  our  country 
that  we  should  be  money-grubbing  in  the 


126  J'  Accuse 

trenches  of  Flanders,  France,  and  Poland. 
It  was  a  notice  to  the  other  neutral  nations 
that  they  should  look  only  to  their  selfish 
interests  and  endeavor  to  make  as  much 
money  as  they  could  out  of  the  war.  It 
was  an  assault  upon  the  idealism  of  our  people 
and  a  degradation  of  our  country  in  our  own 
eyes  and  in  the  estimation  of  the  world. 

When  the  submarine  outrages  began,  Mr. 
Wilson  returned  to  phrases,  ringing  and 
clear.  ' '  Strict  accountability  "  sounded  well, 
but  again  it  proved  vox  et  pr&terea  nihil;  the 
voice  of  Jacob  but  the  hand  of  Esau.  It  is 
nine  months  since  the  Lusitania,  but  nothing 
has  been  done.  The  half-hearted,  partial 
and  wholly  unsatisfactory  acceptance  by 
Germany  of  some  of  our  contentions  was 
clearly  due  not  to  Mr.  Wilson  but  to  the 
success  of  the  British  measures  against  sub- 
marines which  have  practically  driven  them 
from  British  waters.  The  Ancona  and  the 
Persia  show  also  the  insincerity  of  even 
this  partial  acceptance. 

Throughout  all  of  Mr.  Wilson's  diplomatic 


J'  Accuse  127 

correspondence  the  thing  that  causes  the 
deepest  shame  to  Americans  is  the  constant 
recurrence  of  the  question  of  money.  His 
diplomacy  has  been  a  check-book  diplo- 
macy; his  consecration  to  the  high  duties 
of  American  citizenship  has  been  a  bank- 
balance  consecration.  This  is  illustrated  by 
the  commercial  protests  to  Great  Britain. 
It  is  a  nice  question  of  law  whether  Great 
Britain  has  illegally  caused  financial  injury 
to  American  interests;  it  is  clear  that  this 
question  most  be  adjudicated  by  a  properly 
constituted  tribunal,  and  that  if  it  is  decided 
that  there  have  been  such  illegal  financial 
injuries  Great  Britain  will  be  both  willing  and 
able  to  make  financial  reparation.  In  the 
meantime,  while  she  is  straining  to  preserve 
in  the  world  our  ideals  of  freedom  and 
democracy,  it  is  shameful  that  we  should  be 
pestering  her  with  demands  for  money,  and 
endeavoring  for  the  sake  of  enabling  our 
traders  to  make  more  money  to  persuade  her 
to  relax  the  pressure  which  she  is  bringing 
upon  Germany. 


128  J'  Accuse 

Mr.  Wilson  has  brought  it  about  that  we 
are  acting  with  an  unparalleled  selfishness, 
and  are  devoting  ourselves  to  making  money 
out  of  the  travail  of  Europe.  Great  profits 
from  foreign  sales,  easy  Wall  Street  money 
from  soaring  war-stocks,  have  caused  an  orgy 
of  extravagance  in  our  larger  cities.  And  all 
the  while  we  are  thoroughly  ashamed  of 
ourselves,  and  seek  to  salve  our  souls  with 
contributions  to  the  various  war-funds.  We 
know  that  the  Entente  Powers  are  fighting 
our  battle,  that  their  men  are  dying  by  millions 
for  a  cause  on  the  success  of  which  depends 
our  safety  and  the  continuance  in  the  world 
of  our  traditions  of  democratic  freedom; 
thanks  to  Mr.  Wilson  we  not  only  are  not 
helping  them  to  fight  for  us  but  are  charging 
them  like  loan-sharks  for  the  privilege  of 
fighting  for  us.  This  emasculation  of  our 
manhood,  this  degradation  of  our  nation 
is  directly  due  to  the  course  pursued  by 
President  Wilson. 

I  accuse  Mr.  Wilson  of  a  weakness  and 
failure  of  vision  which  has  incalculably  in- 


J  Accuse  129 

jured  our  nation  and  our  world.  I  reluc- 
tantly believe  that  Mr.  Wilson  has  stooped 
to  an  unworthy  and  unsuccessful  attempt 
to  play  party  politics  with  the  destinies  of 
the  world.  I  charge  Mr.  Wilson  with  respon- 
sibility for  the  shame  felt  by  every  true 
American,  for  the  degradation  of  our  country, 
and  for  making  it  despised  by  the  world.  I 
charge  Mr.  Wilson  with  responsibility  for 
the  failure  of  other  neutral  nations  to  rise  to 
the  needs  of  the  greatest  crisis  the  world  has 
ever  known,  and  for  the  continuation  of  the 
war  for  at  least  a  year  longer  than  necessary. 
I  charge  Mr.  Wilson  with  responsibility 
for  the  entry  into  the  war  of  Turkey  and 
Bulgaria,  and  all  the  misery  incident  thereto. 
I  charge  Mr.  Wilson  with  responsibility  for 
the  horrors  of  Armenia,  the  slaughter  of  hun- 
dreds of  thousands  of  unarmed  Christians, 
and  for  the  ultimate  death  or  wounds  of 
at  least  five  million  human  beings.  Never 
has  such  an  opportunity  to  serve  mankind 
been  offered  to  a  man,  never  has  a  man  failed 
so  miserably.  Never  have  the  talents  he 

0 


130  J'  Accuse 

has  allowed  to  tarnish  in  the  ground  been  so 
needed. 

I  believe  that  the  American  people  is 
nobler  than  its  present  Administration.  If 
I  did  not  believe  this  I  should  be  ashamed  to 
look  any  foreigner  in  the  face  until  I  had 
sought  self-respect  under  a  flag  alien  to  that 
which  my  ancestors  helped  to  set  up  and 
which  I  have  always  loved  and  honored. 


THE  HYPHENATE 

WHEN  are  Americans  not  Americans? 
Very  seldom,  I  truly  believe,  even 
though  the  instances  where  they  are  Ger- 
mans are  so  conspicuous  and  so  outrageous 
that  many  persons  think  that  the  number  of 
them  is  nearly  coincident  with  the  number 
of  Americans  of  German  origin. 

It  would  be  asking  too  much  to  expect  the 
mass  of  our  population  of  foreign  birth  to 
have  a  clearer  insight  than  the  President 
of  our  country.  It  is  only  a  few  months 
since  Mr.  Wilson  publicly  said  that  we  in 
America  on  account  of  our  detachment 
from  the  scene  of  conflict  were  in  a  position 
to  judge  dispassionately  concerning  this 
"  quarrel  between  the  nations." 

Of  course  this  war  is  not  in  any  sense  a 
"quarrel  between  nations."  It  is  a  conflict 
between  two  incompatible  systems  of  ideals, 


132  The  Hyphenate 

of  evolution,  of  government.  National  or- 
ganization serves  merely  to  provide  the 
units  by  which  the  contest  is  carried  on, 
the  framework  upon  which  the  armies  are 
erected.  It  is  not  a  contest  of  race,  of  blood, 
of  language,  of  place ;  it  is  the  newer  doctrine 
of  the  right  of  men  to  live  their  own  lives 
fighting  against  the  survival  of  the  old  idea 
that  men  are  the  property  of  their  rulers. 

The  mass  of  our  foreign  population  does 
not  realize  this  fundamental  truth  any  more 
than  does  Mr.  Wilson,  and  thinks  that  it  is 
a  quarrel  between  the  Teutonic  nations  on 
one  side  and  France,  England,  and  their 
allies  on  the  other.  Our  German-born  do 
not  know  France  and  England,  they  do  know 
Germany.  They  have  friends  and  relatives 
fighting  against  France  and  England,  and 
it  would  be  extraordinary  if  their  sympathies 
were  not  with  their  kin.  This  ignorance 
of  what  the  war  means,  this  natural  lack  of 
understanding,  is  the  cause  of  nearly  all  the 
pro- Germanism  which  exists  in  the  United 
States. 


The  Hyphenate  133 

Should  the  United  States  enter  the  war 
against  Germany,  the  case  would  be  very 
different.  Then  our  hyphenates  would  have 
to  choose  between  America  which  they  know 
and  Germany  which  they  know;  between 
the  land  which  they  left  and  the  land  to 
which  they  have  come  for  the  sake  of  the 
greater  liberty  and  consequent  greater  oppor- 
tunity which  it  offers.  I  cannot  believe 
that  more  than  an  insignificant  percentage 
would  under  these  circumstances  fail  to 
show  themselves  Americans.  In  Canada 
the  proportion  of  German  blood  is  even 
greater  than  in  the  United  States,  but  except 
in  isolated  instances  the  hyphen  does  not 
exist  there.  To  be  sure,  the  Canadian 
Government  from  the  beginning  spoke  with 
no  uncertain  voice  and  has  done  much  to 
inspire  the  people  and  to  make  them  under- 
stand the  great  moral  issues  of  the  war. 
The  contrast  between  the  course  of  Canada 
— an  independent  nation  under  no  legal 
obligation  to  enter  the  war  because  Great 
Britain  had  entered  it — and  that  of  the 


134  The  Hyphenate 

United  States,  which  in  the  past  has  typified 
democracy  to  the  world,  is  indeed  pitiful. 
Ottawa  had  vision;  Washington  was  blind. 

Undoubtedly  there  are  many  German  spies 
working  in  Canada.  I  am  convinced,  how- 
ever, that  the  number  of  them  who  are  acting 
on  account  of  a  mistaken  patriotism  is 
negligible;  they  are  spies  for  revenue  only, 
for  the  money  that  is  being  paid  them. 
There  are  always  in  every  land  men  who 
will  sell  themselves  for  gold;  Judases  have 
existed  since  the  birth  of  man.  It  is  only 
in  Utopia  that  no  men  are  venal. 

In  like  manner  in  the  United  States  pro- 
German  acts,  as  distinguished  from  mere 
pro-German  talk,  have  been  almost  entirely 
paid  for  with  German  money.  The  fact 
that  Von  Bernstorff  and  most  of  his  crew 
have  been  tolerated  has  been  the  most 
fruitful  cause  of  the  occasional  success  of  the 
unacknowledged  war  which  is  being  waged 
against  us.  Strikes  in  our  factories  have 
been  organized  and  promoted,  our  industrial 
plants  have  been  wrecked,  explosive  works 


The  Hyphenate  135 

have  been  blown  up,  bombs  have  been 
placed  in  our  vessels  and  in  ships  carrying 
our  goods.  But  wherever  we  have  been 
able  to  trace  the  perpetrators  of  these 
outrages  it  has  been  shown  that  they  were 
paid  to  carry  them  out  rather  than  that  they 
acted  from  false  patriotism.  Many  have 
talked  for  Germany  without  pay;  few  have 
committed  pro-German  crimes  against  us 
except  for  pay.  The  expulsion  of  Boy-Ed 
and  Von  Papen  has  not  destroyed  this  traffic 
in  crime ;  an  octopus  of  thousands  of  tentacles 
scarcely  feels  the  lopping  off  of  two.  We 
have  not  even  struck  at  Von  Bernstorff, 
the  head  of  this  octopus;  instead,  Mr.  Wilson 
asks  him  to  dinner,  and,  Bryan  having 
departed,  gives  him  something  better  than 
grape-juice. 

I  believe  I  am  entirely  right  in  the  fore- 
going estimate  of  our  hyphenated  citizens. 
Many  people  think  that  I  am  wrong,  many 
believe  that  even  were  the  issue  between 
Germany  and  America  these  men  would  be 
Germans.  Some  even  assert  that  the  shame- 


136  The  Hyphenate 

f  ul  course  of  our  Administration  has  been  due 
to  fear  of  uprisings  within  our  land  which 
would  approach  revolution  in  magnitude 
if  we  dared  to  take  the  definite  anti-German 
position  which  civilization  and  honor  demand 
of  us.  If  they  are  right  and  I  am  wrong, 
I  only  repeat  that  it  is  an  added  reason  why 
we  should  be  at  war  with  Germany. 

Our  country  has  grown  to  its  present  high 
estate  through  its  power  of  digesting  the 
immigration  attracted  to  it  by  the  freedom 
and  opportunity  offered  by  its  institutions. 
We  have  prided  ourselves  that  after  a 
generation  these  strangers  have  become 
Americans.  If  it  be  true  that  any  such 
proportion  of  our  people  as  those  of  German 
blood  not  only  are  not  Americans  but  are 
incapable  of  becoming  Americans,  the  future 
of  our  land  is  dark.  No  price  can  be  too 
high  to  pay  to  eradicate  this  cancer  if  it 
exist  in  our  body  politic;  revolution  itself 
would  be  but  a  minor  ill  in  comparison  to 
allowing  such  a  gangrene  to  fester  in  our 
nation.  America  is  sick  unto  death  if  we 


The  Hyphenate  137 

have  this  German  menace  engrafted  upon  us. 
As  I  have  said  before,  I  do  not  believe  it ;  I  do 
not  believe  that  even  Mr.  Wilson  has  been 
guided  by  fear  of  German  revolt  in  America. 
But  I  do  say  that  the  merest  possibility  of 
this  thing  being  true,  the  remotest  chance 
that  this  poison  may  have  entered  our 
veins  and  we  not  know  it,  demands  that  we 
take  such  action  as  will  enable  us  to  know 
and  not  to  guess.  Our  ancestors  fought  to 
establish  this  nation  upon  a  foundation 
which  they  believed  would  endure  and  be 
permanent;  if  this  foundation  is  attacked 
and  in  danger  of  giving  way,  it  is  our  duty 
to  shrink  from  no  sacrifice  to  strengthen  it 
and  reestablish  it  before  the  whole  structure 
of  our  nationhood  come  toppling  down  about 
our  ears.  We  owe  this  duty  to  the  memory 
of  our  ancestors,  to  ourselves  who  are  enjoy- 
ing the  freedom  made  possible  by  them,  and 
to  our  descendants  who  are  entitled  to 
receive  from  us  undamaged  and  intact  the 
inheritance  of  liberty  which  was  entrusted 
to  our  guardianship. 


138  The  Hyphenate 

In  the  meantime,  even  if  we  do  not  actively 
distrust  our  citizens  of  German  birth,  we 
most  assuredly  should  not  trust  them.  We 
should  watch  them  constantly,  scrupulously. 
They  should  be  made  to  feel  that  the  acts  of 
mercenary  Germans  have  thrown  upon  them 
a  suspicion  which  they  must  dispel;  that  it  is 
to  their  interest  even  more  than  to  that  of 
the  native  citizen  that  the  instigators  and 
perpetrators  of  pro-German  crimes  be  ap- 
prehended and  punished.  Let  them  know 
that  they  are  on  trial  in  the  Court  of  Public 
Opinion,  and  that  if  they'  are  there  found 
guilty  they  will  receive  but  short  shrift  in 
case  this  country  enters  the  war.  In  that 
event,  there  will  be  only  one  answer  for  those 
hyphenated  Americans  who  show  that  they 
are  Germans.  They  will  be  shot.  America 
will  then  have  to  prove  that  she  still  is 
America,  and  for  traitors  within  her  borders 
this  proof  will  take  the  form  of  the  rope 
or  the  rifle. 


MACHINES 

'"THE  wars  of  history  have  been  fought 
•*•      by    men    aided  *  by    machines.     This 
war  is  being  fought  by  machines  directed 
and  served  by  men. 

To-day  courage  and  heroism  have  as 
much  place  and  are  as  nobly  exhibited  as 
ever  before,  but  the  time  has  gone  when  the 
deeds  of  individuals  can  have  any  appre- 
ciable influence  on  the  outcome  of  the 
conflict.  No  more  will  a  Black  Prince  in 
shining  armor  charge  through  the  melee 
of  men  at  arms,  carrying  victory  in  his 
wake,  even  although  some  of  the  protection 
worn  by  the  modern  soldier  is  absurdly 
like  the  chain  mail  of  medievalism.  The 
trench  holder  of  Flanders,  in  gas  mask  and 
bullet-proof  helmet,  with  bayonet  and  en- 
trenching-tool,  looks  like  a  cross  between 

Richard   Cceur   de   Lion  and  the  warriors 
139 


140  Machines 

Tweedledum  and  Tweedledee  of  Alice  in 
Wonderland. 

The  great  physical  lesson  of  the  war  is 
that  machines  must  be  fought  with  machines, 
not  with  men.  No  superiority  in  men  alone 
can  cope  with  a  superiority  in  metal;  no 
bravery  can  prevail  against  preparedness 
in  munitions.  The  tragic  retreat  of  the 
Russians  in  1915  was  the  harrowing  spectacle 
of  men  unarmed  waiting  for  the  death  of 
their  fellows  to  give  the  chance  to  snatch 
up  the  rifle  before  it  had  time  to  cool, 
in  the  meantime  being  exposed  absolutely 
impotent  against  the  hail  of  the  machine- 
gun.  To  a  lesser  degree  the  same  was  true 
on  the  western  front,  especially  in  the  lethal 
neighborhood  of  Ypres. 

Against  weight  of  moving  metal  no  sta- 
tionary metal  is  proof.  The  great  domes  and 
cupolas  of  Liege,  Namur,  Antwerp,  Maubeuge, 
Warsaw,  Brest-Litovsk,  and  all  the  other 
tragic  places  crumbled  into  dust  before  the 
might  of  the  great  shells  and  high  explosives 
of  the  Germans.  The  mass  of  old  Mother 


Machines  I41 

Earth  alone,  twisted  into  thin  trenches  and 
hiding  machine-guns  and  ordnance,  has  been 
able  to  stop  the  advance.  Verdun  stands 
to-day  not  because  of  her  great  guns  or  her 
costly  fortifications,  but  because  of  the 
length  and  intricacy  of  the  ditches  far  in 
front  which  keep  the  mighty  monsters  from 
being  able  to  vent  their  wrath  on  the  steel 
and  the  concrete  of  the  fortress.  These 
ditches  can  be  made  in  a  week  and  have 
held  for  a  year;  Namur  took  years  to  build, 
but  could  scarcely  stand  the  attack  for  a  day. 

It  is  the  very  smallness  of  the  trenches 
which  makes  them  invulnerable, — their  small- 
ness  and  their  length.  A  heavy  shell  if  it 
strikes  right  can  of  course  destroy  any 
trench,  or  rather  break  it.  But  the  fact  that 
the  continuity  of  the  line  is  broken  for  a  few 
yards  does  not  lessen  the  power  of  the 
trenches  on  each  side  of  the  break,  and  the 
attackers  are  unable  to  send  men  forward 
to  occupy  the  breach.  In  an  hour  the 
trench  is  reconstructed  as  good  as  ever. 

The  only  way  that  the  trenches  can  be 


142  Machines 

taken  is  by  long  and  expensive  artillery 
preparation.  A  huge  number  of  guns  must 
be  brought  to  bear  upon  a  line  of  trench 
of  considerable  length,  and  a  vast  number 
of  high  explosive  shells  accurately  exploded 
in  it  until  the  trench  is  practically  destroyed 
for  its  full  length.  Most  of  the  defenders 
have  in  the  meantime  withdrawn  to  the 
second  line,  and  their  own  guns  are  trained 
upon  the  line  they  have  left,  the  exact 
range  of  which  is  of  course  known  to  them. 
The  attacking  force  when  it  charges  to  occupy 
the  line  of  the  destroyed  trench  is  exposed 
to  almost  unsupportable  fire,  and  even  if  it 
gains  the  ruins  is  exposed  to  counter-attack 
in  which  it  has  no  advantage.  The  result 
is  that  the  offensive  must  suffer  frightful 
loss  for  an  insignificant  advance  even  if 
successful  in  taking  and  holding  the  line 
attacked,  and  there  are  very  few  places 
where  the  value  of  the  land  gained,  reckoned 
usually  only  in  yards,  is  in  any  way  com- 
mensurate either  with  the  loss  of  men  or 
with  the  cost  of  the  munitions  expended  on  it. 


Machines  143 

Nowhere  on  the  western  front  has  either 
side  been  able  to  break  through  for  any 
depth  of  penetration.  In  many  places  the 
trenches  are  in  the  identical  spots  where 
they  were  first  dug  a  year  and  a  half  ago; 
in  no  place  has  the  change  been  great 
enough  to  alter  the  general  contour  of  the 
battle  line.  Yet  for  these  insignificant 
changes  hundreds  of  thousands  of  men  have 
died.  It  has  been  clearly  demonstrated 
that  no  great  advance  can  be  made  across 
entrenchments  so  long  as  the  defenders 
have  three  all-important  things:  first,  enough 
men  to  man  the  line  with  a  sufficient  density 
of  soldiery  together  with  reserves  sufficient 
for  any  necessary  counter-attacks;  second, 
enough  machine-guns  skillfully  placed;  third, 
enough  artillery  back  of  the  lines. 

The  longer  the  lines  of  battle,  the  worse 
it  is  for  the  side  which  has  the  smallest 
number  of  men.  Since  the  great  shortages 
of  munitions  of  the  Entente  Powers  at  the 
beginning  of  the  war  have  been  remedied,  it 
is  improbable  that  there  will  again  be  a 


144  Machines 

lack  of  guns  or  shells  on  either  side  that  will 
lead  to  defeat.  The  butcher-bill  is  the  one 
factor  which  will  in  the  end  inevitably  defeat 
Germany,  for  as  soon  as  the  number  of 
available  men  becomes  too  small  to  maintain 
the  necessary  density  at  all  points  in  the 
line,  the  whole  line  will  give  way  and  have 
to  be  contracted.  A  breach  at  one  point 
must  be  opposed  by  men  drawn  from  other 
points  which  will  in  turn  become  so  weakened 
that  they  can  be  penetrated.  The  spectacu- 
lar success  of  the  German  advance  in  the 
Balkans  will  probably  actually  result  in 
German  collapse  some  months  earlier  than 
it  would  otherwise  have  come,  because  of 
the  extension  of  the  battle  line.  When  the 
break  takes  place,  it  is  likely  that  the  Ger- 
man lines  everywhere  will  have  to  withdraw 
to  make  the  circle  about  Germany  far 
smaller  than  it  now  is.  This  withdrawal 
will  probably  be  accompanied  by  losses  so 
great  as  to  make  the  new  and  shorter  line 
almost  as  weak  in  men  as  the  old  long  line. 
I  believe  that  when  this  shriveling  up  of 


Machines  145 

the  German  ring  commences,  the  process 
will  go  fast  and  far.  The  time  when  the 
balloon  of  German  extension  will  be  punc- 
tured no  one  can  predict;  that  it  will  be 
punctured  the  mathematics  of  man-power 
makes  certain. 

The  machinery  of  this  trench  warfare  is 
complex  and  technical,  and  requires  in  its 
servants  the  highest  skill.  The  guns  vary 
from  the  huge  42-centimeter  giants  that 
destroyed  Liege  and  Namur,  giants  that 
can  advance  only  with  slow  and  ponder- 
ous steps  over  prepared  roadways,  and  need 
foundations  of  concrete  from  which  to  hurl 
their  irresistible  destruction,  down  through 
other  guns  of  varying  calibers  to  the  wonder- 
ful French  seventy-fives.  These  guns  are 
about  three  inches  in  mouth,  can  spit  twenty 
times  a  minute,  and  have  marvelous  accuracy 
both  with  shrapnel  and  high  explosive 
shells.  It  is  they  who  really  saved  civiliza- 
tion from  destruction.  Then  there  is  Archi- 
bald, the  anti-aircraft  gun,  who  slings  shrapnel 
only,  but  can  explode  it  at  any  height  he 


10 


146  Machines 

wishes  up  to  twenty-five  thousand  feet,  far 
higher  than  any  aeroplane  can  operate. 
Archibald  is  the  only  immodest  one  among 
the  guns;  he  is  willing  to  bask  in  the  open, 
while  all  the  others  slink  and  hide  in  holes 
and  thickets. 

Then  there  are  the  machine-guns,  the 
spendthrift  bullet-throwers,  drumming  like 
a  maddened  flock  of  woodpeckers,  squirting 
death  at  all  who  can  be  seen.  And  last  of 
all  are  the  individual  rifles,  only  a  few  years 
ago  omnipotent  in  battle,  but  now  relegated 
to  a  secondary  importance  save  for  the 
bayonet  at  their  ends  by  which  the  final 
charge  is  driven  home  and  the  last  tragedy 
of  death  enacted. 

Besides  this  array  of  tubes  of  varying 
might  there  are  the  strange  and  twisted  instru- 
ments which  like  misshapen  dwarfs  accom- 
pany their  straight-limbed  brethren,  each 
with  servants  for  its  needs:  squat  mortars 
to  lob  mines  for  a  few  score  of  yards,  catapults 
like  those  of  Roman  days  to  throw  bombs 
into  the  opposing  trenches;  hand-grenades 


Machines  14? 

that  are  tossed,  machines  for  erecting  barb- 
wire  entanglements,  and  apparatus  for  tear- 
ing them  down,  machines  to  burrow  far 
underground  beneath  the  lines  of  the  foe, 
and  mines  to  blow  him  to  bits,  microphones 
to  hear  what  he  is  doing,  and  telescopes  to 
spy  him  out,  searchlights  and  rocket  flares 
to  illuminate  him,  gas  bottles  to  suffocate 
him. 

Above  is  the  captive  observation  balloon, 
bulging  like  some  huge  and  misshapen  insect, 
wabbling  to  be  free.  Almost  invisible  in 
the  clouds  the  whirring  aeroplane  notes  and 
sees.  It  is  the  aeroplane  which  is  the  despair 
of  generals,  for  no  great  movement  of  troops 
can  be  hidden  from  its  prying  eyes,  and 
no  great  surprises  are  possible. 

Behind  the  lines,  too,  the  machines  are 
working  in  the  wonderful  system  of  transport 
required  by  the  modern  army.  Railroads 
are  built,  roads  are  constructed,  and  the 
great  power-trucks  carry  the  shells  to  the 
ever-hungry  guns  and  the  marmalade  and 
bully  beef  to  Thomas  Atkins  himself.  The 


148  Machines 

motor  ambulances  whirl  wounded  Thomas 
back  to  kind  hands  and  wise  doctors.  Every- 
where it  is  by  machines  that  the  work  is 
being  done,  and  everywhere  the  telephone 
and  the  wireless  chatter  to  make  sure  that 
all  these  machines  cooperate. 

These  machines  that  I  have  described 
have  something  of  an  equality  on  both  sides, 
but  they  are  not  the  ultimately  deciding 
factor.  The  machines  against  which  Ger- 
many is  impotent,  which  will  never  allow 
Germany  to  resume  her  place  in  the  world 
until  she  is  purged  of  her  medievalism,  lie 
chained  behind  the  mists  of  some  Scottish 
harbor.  The  great  Dreadnoughts  of  Great 
Britain,  sentried  by  their  cruisers  and 
destroyers  and  all  the  myriad  fleet  of  every 
kind  of  vessel  that  can  serve  their  needs — 
these  are  the  machines  which  Germany 
dreads  and  which  have  sealed  her  doom. 
There  can  be  no  peace  for  Germany  until 
her  own  ships  can  sail  the  oceans;  no  matter 
what  happens  on  land,  her  ships  dare  not 
venture  forth  until  the  demands  of  the 


/  Machines  149 

Allies  are  satisfied  and  the  British  bulldog 
growls  assent.  In  vain  has  the  Junkertum 
sought  to  negative  these  great  machines  by 
little  spiteful  barbaric  machines  of  their 
own;  the  inhuman  submarine  and  the  baby- 
slaying  Zeppelin  are  powerless  to  draw  the 
teeth  of  the  British  navy.  Germany  has 
put  her  faith  into  machines  and  has  sold  her 
soul  to  machines,  yet  by  machines  she  is  to 
be  humbled  to  the  dust.  She  believed  that 
machinery  was  greater  than  man;  she  is 
learning  that  man  is  greater  than  machinery 
and  still  governs  and  controls  it  even  when 
he  seems  to  be  but  its  slave. 

Chemistry,  physics,  mechanics, — machines. 
Germany  thought  them  greater  than  the 
moral  inheritances  of  the  centuries.  She 
trusted  to  knowledge  rather  than  to  wisdom, 
and  is  being  utterly  confounded.  She 
builded  her  machines  into  gods,  and  thought 
them  mightier  than  morality.  She  finds 
that  truth  and  honor  and  faith  are  still 
triumphant,  and  can  use  as  servants  the 
things  that  she  believed  were  gods, — chemis- 


150  Machines 

try,  physics,  mechanics, — machines.  The 
machine-worshipper  shall  end  crushed  by 
the  god  he  builded,  by  the  Frankenstein 
which  he  evolved. 


ISOLATION 

PRESIDENT  WILSON  has  come  out 

for  preparedness,  and  is  eating  his 
words  of  a  year  ago.  But  even  now  he 
seems  entirely  blind  to  the  real  cause  of  the 
need  for  preparation,  as  well  as  to  the 
means  by  which  it  may  be  obtained  actually 
rather  than  politically.  The  same  lack 
of  vision  which  has  caused  him  so  to  act  in  the 
past  that  Americans  blush  with  shame 
when  they  discuss  the  course  of  their  country 
with  a  foreigner  is  still  evident  in  his  latest 
pronouncements. 

Can  you  not  see,  Mr.  Wilson,  that  the 
whole  world  is  being  made  over  anew,  that 
the  sheep  are  being  separated  from  the 
goats  among  nations?  Can  you  not  appreci- 
ate that  certain  nations  are  demonstrating 
that  they  are  imbued  with  a  spirit  of  civiliza- 
tion in  the  support  of  which  they  are  willing 


152  Isolation 

if  need  be  to  perish  ?  Can  you  not  understand 
that  great  and  enlightened  democracies 
do  not  wage  wars  of  aggression,  and  that 
brother  democracies  have  nothing  to  fear 
from  them?  Do  you  not  know  that  the 
spirit  of  a  nation  is  the  important  thing,  that 
there  are  moral  qualities  which  are  not 
written  down  in  black  and  white,  which  are 
not  to  be  found  in  your  text-books  and  your 
treatises  on  law,  but  which  are  none  the  less 
the  greatest  and  the  truest  influences  in  this 
world?  Can  you  not  perceive  that  there  is 
something  intangible  but  infinitely  and 
splendidly  existent  behind  and  underlying 
that  international  law  which  to  a  great  extent 
has  broken  down  because  of  your  failure 
to  give  it  the  support  which  it  was  entitled 
to  receive  from  you?  Cannot  you,  who 
strain  with  polysyllabic  retchings  at  the 
gnats  of  money  rights  in  trading  adventures, 
you  who  swallow  the  camels  of  German 
insult  and  affront  and  shout  a  victory  if  the 
Teutons  say  that  they  will  currycomb  and 
manicure  the  next  camel  before  they  ask 


Isolation  153 

you  to  swallow  it,  cannot  you  understand 
that  mere  words  will  never  get  you  anywhere? 
Words  are  only  the  messengers  of  ideas, 
Mr.  Wilson,  and  no  matter  how  splendid 
and  harmonious  may  be  their  liveries,  they 
can  accomplish  nothing  if  they  have  no 
message  to  carry. 

George  Washington  was  undoubtedly  great 
and  wise,  but  his  saying  that  it  behoves  us 
to  avoid  entangling  European  alliances, 
however  wise  it  may  have  been  at  the  time 
it  was  spoken,  no  longer  is  true,  and  is  capable 
of  great  harm.  The  conditions  existing  at 
that  time  have  completely  changed.  Then 
we  were  a  small  and  struggling  nation,  just 
beginning  to  get  on  our  feet,  secluded  and 
self-sustaining,  and  having  but  little  contact 
with  the  European  world.  Since  then  we 
have  become  great  and  influential,  and  now 
play  an  important  part  in  world  economics. 
The  advances  in  means  of  communication 
and  transportation  have  cut  to  a  fraction 
the  width  of  the  oceans,  and  to-day  our 
interests  in  every  capital  are  weighty  and 


154  Isolation 

considerable.  We  are  full-grown;  no  longer 
a  child. 

Moreover,  the  responsibility  which  we  owe 
to  civilization  has  increased  along  with 
our  wealth  and  population.  The  world 
can  look  with  tolerance  on  a  weak  and  new- 
born nation  if  the  selfish  problems  of  national 
existence  demand  its  full  attention;  when  a 
nation  has  attained  greatness  and  strength 
such  selfishness  becomes  abominable.  It 
may  have  been  true  a  century  ago  that  we 
were  not  greatly  concerned  with  European 
happenings;  he  who  now  makes  such  a 
statement  knows  not  what  he  is  talking  of. 
Our  concern  is  to-day  vital,  and  the  outcome 
of  this  war  will  affect  every  citizen  of  our 
country. 

But  much  more  important  than  the 
changes  here  at  home  are  the  changes  in  the 
European  countries  with  which  alliances 
are  possible.  In  the  time  of  Washington 
we  were  just  initiating  our  great  experiment 
in  modern  democracy;  no  other  nation  in 
the  world  had  dared  to  adopt  it.  England 


Isolation  155 

still  believed  in  the  old  doctrine  of  aggrandize- 
ment by  conquest,  still  held  that  colonies 
were  properties  which  could  be  exploited 
for  the  benefit  of  the  motherland,  still 
thought  that  he  should  take  who  had  the 
power  and  he  should  hold  who  could.  France 
was  obsessed  by  the  delusion  of  military 
expansion  which  found  expression  in  the 
Napoleonic  struggle.  Spain  and  Holland 
were  dreaming  of  vanished  victories;  Italy 
and  Germany  had  not  yet  come  into  being. 
The  leaven  of  our  example  was  just  begin- 
ning to  work  in  France  and  England,  but  had 
not  yet  permeated  the  mass  of  those  countries ; 
in  no  others  had  the  ferment  even  started 
to  effervesce. 

The  conception  of  something  higher  than 
national  selfishness  did  not  exist;  the  idea 
of  international  duty  was  not  yet  born. 
Just  as  the  old  robber  barons  sallied  forth 
from  their  strongholds  to  seize  what  they 
could  for  their  own  benefit,  so  all  the  Euro- 
pean nations  still  had  faith  in  conquest,  and 
sought  alliance  only  to  make  more  effective 


Isolation 


their  raids  on  others  or  to  be  more  secure 
against  raids  on  themselves.  The  belief  in 
a  permanent  mutual  cooperation  between 
nations  for  the  purpose  of  promoting  peace- 
ful development  was  not  thought  possible 
even  though  between  persons  it  was  already 
accepted. 

An  alliance  is  a  cooperation,  and  to  be 
successful  requires  that  there  be  an  essential 
unity  of  purpose  or  of  ideals.  An  alliance 
a  hundred  years  ago  between  monarchical 
Europe  and  republican  America  would  have 
been  an  absurdity;  oil  and  water  will  not 
mix.  This  truth  is  aptly  illustrated  by  the 
way  in  which  Italy  has  broken  away  from 
the  unnatural  Dreibund,  the  underlying 
cause  of  which  was  that  the  growth  of 
democracy  in  Italy  made  her  an  impossible 
partner  with  autocratic  Germany  and  Austria. 

These  conditions  which  made  alliance 
impossible  for  us  in  the  time  of  Washington 
no  longer  prevail.  Great  Britain  is  just  as 
democratic  as  we  are;  in  many  ways  even 
more  so.  The  British  dominions  are  in 


Isolation  157 

fact  members  of  a  British  Federation;  each 
is  self-governing  and  free,  and  the  ties  which 
have  made  them  with  one  accord  do  their 
full  duty  in  this  war  are  social  and  economic, 
and  are  based  on  the  essential  unity  of  their 
democratic  institutions.  Marvelous  and 
glorious  France  is  to-day  probably  the  sound- 
est democracy  in  the  world;  nothing  is  more 
impossible  than  that  in  France  another 
monarchy  or  hybrid  empire  should  ever 
again  come  into  power.  Italy  is  for  all 
practical  purposes  a  democracy,  and  even 
in  Russia  it  is  the  growth  of  democratic 
ideals  which  has  rendered  impotent  the  pro- 
German  aristocracy  which  only  a  year  ago 
threatened  a  real  danger  that  Russia  would 
not  hold  out  to  the  end.  The  Russian 
people  now  know  that  this  is  their  war, 
and  for  this  reason  their  armies  are  able  to 
come  back  so  splendidly  after  the  crushing 
defeats  and  bitter  retreats  of  1915. 

These  democratic  ideals  which  are  now 
making  over  anew  the  major  part  of  Europe 
differ  in  no  essential  from  our  own  ideals. 


158  Isolation 

Liberty  for  the  individual,  responsibility 
of  government  to  the  people,  opportunity 
for  peaceful  industry,  are  for  them  as  for 
us  the  foundations  of  their  establishments. 
They  have  no  more  ambition  to  impose  by 
force  of  arms  their  imperium  upon  any 
unwilling  people  than  have  we.  They  are  our 
kind  of  people,  and  we  ought  to  get  closer 
to  them. 

On  the  moral  side,  therefore,  there  is  no 
reason  why  we  should  not  join  with  the 
democracies  of  Europe  to  promote  the  truths 
in  which  we  all  believe.  If  we  preserve 
any  conception  of  obligation  to  the  world, 
it  is  by  cooperation  with  those  who  entertain 
the  same  sense  of  obligation  that  we  can 
best  accomplish  our  purpose. 

When  we  come  to  consider  the  selfish 
question  of  the  material  advantages  to  be 
gained  by  such  association  we  are  met  with 
most  interesting  probabilities.  There  is  little 
doubt  but  what  after  the  war  the  victorious 
Entente  Powers  will  adopt  some  system  of 
commercial  reprisal  against  their  enemies 


Isolation  159 

which  will  for  a  long  time  make  it  impossible 
for  Germany  to  have  a  prevailing  influence 
in  the  markets  of  the  world.  However 
much  we  may  deprecate  this,  it  is  too  much 
to  expect  that  the  victors  will  not  impose 
this  penance  upon  the  vanquished.  Not 
to  do  so  would  be  altruism  beyond  what 
can  be  expected  from  those  who  have  suffered 
as  have  the  nations  at  war.  This  close 
commercial  alliance  will  throttle  the  indus- 
tries of  the  Central  Empires  and  will  have  a 
most  injurious  effect  upon  our  own  trade  if 
we  stand  outside  of  it  and  do  not  share  in  it. 
Personally,  I  am  entirely  opposed  to  tariff 
restrictions,  but  these  restrictions  are  going 
to  come,  and  it  behoves  us  to  make  the 
best  of  them  we  can. 

The  victorious  Entente  will  after  the 
war  be  absolutely  supreme  in  the  world. 
They  can  impose  their  will  upon  any  nation, 
upon  any  combination  of  nations  which 
could  be  formed  against  them.  Were  these 
victorious  powers  autocratic,  this  supremacy 
would  constitute  an  indescribable  menace; 


160  Isolation 

were  they  imbued  with  the  same  idea  of 
military  conquest  which  impelled  Germany 
to  bring  on  this  war,  the  prospect  for  civiliza- 
tion would  be  dark  indeed.  The  safety  of 
progress  lies  in  the  fact  that  they  are  demo- 
cratic, that  they  have  the  same  ideals  of 
evolutionary  advance  which  we  have.  They 
are  going  to  undertake  the  guidance  of  the 
march  of  progress,  and  they  have  the  power 
to  do  so. 

For  our  own  advantage  in  commercial 
prosperity,  it  is  of  vital  import  that  we 
should  be  within  this  charmed  circle.  They 
will  control  the  seas  whether  we  want  them 
to  or  not;  we  are  powerless  to  prevent  it. 
They  will  be  able  to  erect  such  tariffs  as 
they  choose  over  the  greater  part  of  the 
population  of  the  world;  we  cannot  stop 
them.  It  is  clear  that  our  interest  lies  in 
joining  with  them  and  sharing  in  the  advan- 
tages which  they  will  enjoy.  There  is 
nothing  morally  wrong  in  our  aligning  our- 
selves with  them,  for  they  represent  the 
same  aspirations  which  we  represent.  They 


Isolation  161 

are  what  they  are  because  of  the  example 
of  the  success  of  our  own  great  experiment. 

From  all  of  these  considerations,  it  is 
clear  that  Mr.  Wilson's  talk  of  the  need  of 
great  preparedness  to  maintain  an  isolation 
which  for  us  has  become  obsolete  is  both 
foolish  and  futile.  We  could  not  equal 
the  strength  of  the  Entente  Powers  if  we 
devoted  ourselves  to  nothing  else;  there  will 
be  a  solidarity  between  them  bred  of  common 
sacrifices  for  a  common  cause  which  will 
endure  for  many  years.  They  have  no 
quarrel  with  us,  however  much  pity  they 
may  feel  for  the  lack  of  vision  which  has 
made  us  stand  selfishly  aside  while  they 
have  battled  for  our  high  ideals.  But  it 
is  too  much  to  expect  that  they  will  extend 
to  us  the  commercial  advantages  which 
they  have  the  legal  right  to  withhold  if 
we  seek  only  the  profit  and  share  none  of 
the  burden. 

No  saying  could  be  more  wicked  and  fool- 
ish than  that  of  Mr.  Mann,  leader  of  the 
minority  in  the  House  of  Representatives,  to 


i6a  Isolation 

the  effect  that  there  is  for  us  greater  danger 
of  war  with  Great  Britain  than  with  Ger- 
many. It  is  of  course  utterly  untrue;  no 
sane  man  can  honestly  believe  it  possible 
that  we,  who  are  seeking  in  the  world  the 
same  democratic  accomplishment  as  Great 
Britain,  could  be  so  ineffably  stupid  as  to 
get  into  a  serious  quarrel  with  Great  Britain, 
especially  when  by  no  possibility  could  we 
be  successful  in  arms  in  such  a  dispute. 
The  idea  is  too  monstrous  to  be  worthy 
of  serious  consideration. 

Only  second  to  this  remark  of  Mr.  Mann's 
in  foolishness  and  falseness  is  Mr.  Wilson's 
recent  saying  in  St.  Louis,  made  in  connec- 
tion with  his  advocacy  of  a  superlative  navy, 
that  owing  to  the  fact  that  one  set  of  belliger- 
ents was  practically  cut  off  from  the  world, 
we  were  unable  to  render  them  the  help 
which  we  should  like  to  give.  Except  for  a 
few  selfish  manufacturers,  we  do  not  want  to 
give  help  to  Germany;  except  for  a  few 
ignorant  or  subsidized  Germans,  we  do  want 
to  help  the  Entente.  Even  should  our  navy 


Isolation  163 

be  omnipotent,  it  would  be  a  base  and  un- 
worthy thing  to  use  it  to  serve  the  purpose 
of  Germany,  a  purpose  which  as  free  and 
liberty-loving  people  we  must  execrate  and 
abhor. 

Let  no  one  think  that  I  am  opposed  to 
much  greater  preparedness  on  our  part  than 
we  now  have;  I  am  opposed  to  having  the 
need  for  it  put  on  false  and  unworthy  grounds, 
as  Mr.  Wilson  has  put  it.  We  do  not  need 
it  to  support  our  cockiness,  to  maintain 
our  isolation,  or  to  keep  the  balance  of  a 
chip  upon  our  shoulder.  We  do  not  need 
it  for  protection  against  France  and  Eng- 
land; we  need  it  to  be  able  to  cooperate 
with  them  in  the  great  work  they  are  doing. 

No  lack  of  armament  can  justify  us  in 
refusing  to  speak  when  it  is  our  duty  or 
should  restrain  us  from  making  the  demands 
required  by  our  honor.  It  has  not  been  the 
custom  of  Americans  in  the  past  to  count 
the  number  of  our  guns  before  we  required 
safety  for  our  citizens  wherever  they  might 
be.  Nor  can  any  amount  of  armament 


164  Isolation 

make  it  right  for  us  to  bully  or  to  threaten. 
If  I  know  my  countrymen,  we  do  not  want 
war  with  any  people;  we  are  not  afraid  of 
war  with  any  people  if  we  are  assured  that 
our  cause  is  just.  Our  lack  of  military 
power  does  not  make  the  blood-money  to 
be  paid  for  the  murdered  victims  of  the 
Lusitania  look  any  the  less  crimson  to  our 
eyes. 

We  do  need  a  greatly  increased  army 
and  navy  to  make  our  just  demands  more 
promptly  recognized,  to  protect  ourselves 
in  the  almost  impossible  event  of  a  German 
victory  in  the  war,  and  above  all  to  enable 
us  to  undertake  our  just  share  of  the  responsi- 
bility of  civilization.  We  do  not  need  to  be 
armed  against  the  enlightened  democracies 
of  the  world ;  we  do  need  to  be  armed  in  their 
support.  We  do  not  need  preparedness  to 
maintain  an  isolation  which  no  longer  is 
either  possible  or  proper;  we  do  need  it  to 
share  in  a  cooperation  of  nations  which 
is  in  accord  with  our  highest  aspirations. 
Let  us  have  a  great  and  an  immediate  increase 


Isolation  165 

in  our  military  and  naval  strength,  but  let 
us  be  honest  and  dignified  in  making  our 
people  understand  why  it  is  required,  yield- 
ing neither  to  undue  and  foolish  fear  of  nations 
from  which  we  have  nothing  to  fear,  nor  to 
the  vainglorious  braggadocio  of  jingoism. 
We  know  that  we  ought  to  be  in  this  war, 
that  we  ought  to  be  fighting  Germany,  that 
we  ought  to  be  maintaining  decency  in 
Mexico.  For  these  things  we  ought  to  have 
much  greater  armament,  but  let  us  not 
pretend  that  we  need  it  for  other  purposes, 
some  illogical,  some  unworthy,  all  political. 
Poor  Mr.  Wilson,  even  when  he  seeks  a 
thing  which  is  right  and  necessary,  is  unable 
to  get  away  from  politics  long  enough  to 
ask  for  it  in  a  manly  and  straightforward 
way.  He  lacks  wit  or  he  lacks  courage 
or  he  lacks  both,  and  no  Niagara  of  rounded 
words  can  conceal  this  lack  from  the  people. 
His  Ides  of  March  will  this  year  fall  on  the 
Tuesday  after  the  first  Monday  of  November. 


AT  THE  END 

T  X  7HAT  will  this  war  mean  to  the  nations 
when  at  last  it  is  over? 

For  Germany,  it  will  mean  regeneration 
and  freedom,  bitter  regret,  poverty,  shame, 
and  an  inheritance  of  hatred  by  other  nations 
which  only  long  years  of  usefulness  and 
sanity  on  the  part  of  the  people  can  dissipate. 
The  new  republic  will  be  fettered  by  tariff 
restrictions  against  German  goods,  and  by 
a  burden  of  debt  which  will  be  crushing. 
The  sins  of  the  fathers  will  indeed  be  visited 
upon  the  children,  but  even  for  Germany 
there  is  the  chance  that  after  long  years  of 
service  the  genius  of  the  people  may  work 
out  a  new  salvation. 

For  Austria-Hungary,  it  will  mean  all 
that  it  means  for  Germany,  and  dismember- 
ment beside.  The  bitterness  of  shameful 
responsibility  will  not  be  quite  so  heavy, 

166 


At  the  End  167 

but  the  people  are  by  nature  less  able  to 
recover  from  the  wastage  of  unsuccessful 
war.  Parts  of  the  old  empire  will  be  incor- 
porated into  the  new  German  republic; 
parts  will  be  annexed  to  Russia,  Italy,  and 
the  Balkan  states.  Hungary  will  resume 
independent  nationhood. 

For  Bulgaria,  it  will  mean  an  end  of  king- 
ship and  a  failure  to  attain  the  present 
ambitions  of  territorial  expansion.  Debt 
and  sorrow,  but  freedom.  Also  determi- 
nation never  again  to  play  the  cat's-paw. 

For  Turkey,  it  will  mean  that  Finis  is 
writ  large  and  plain.  The  Crescent  will  have 
waned  never  to  wax  again.  It  will  be  the 
end  of  Moslem  rule,  but  not  necessarily 
the  end  of  Islam.  The  Cross  will  again 
surmount  St.  Sophia,  and  the  Black  Sea  will 
be  married  to  the  Mediterranean  in  wedlock 
that  cannot  be  broken  at  the  whim  of  a 
Turkish  Pasha.  The  subject  peoples  will 
have  a  liberty  never  before  possible  for  them; 
Armenia  may  worship  the  God  of  her  choice, 
and  the  women  of  Circassia  will  no  more 


1 68  At  the  End 

be  sold  in  the  market-place  of  Stamboul. 
The  civilizing  influences  of  toleration  will 
afford  opportunity  to  the  mystic  Oriental 
mind  to  build  anew  upon  the  wreckage 
of  long  history  a  modern  achievement  of 
accomplishment,  and  Palestine  which  saw 
the  birth  of  ethics  may  gain  the  happiness 
ethical  liberty  alone  can  give.  But  the 
Ottoman  Empire  shall  pass  away  forever  and 
be  but  an  evil  nightmare,  a  sickening  mem- 
ory of  the  taint  of  carrion.  No  Jehad  shall 
ever  again  threaten,  but  the  paths  that  lead 
to  Mecca  shall  be  more  open  than  ever  before. 
For  Japan,  it  will  mean  an  opportunity, 
a  responsibility,  and  a  pregnant  warning. 
Those  children  of  the  Rising  Sun  will  do 
well  to  heed  the  lesson  which  the  war  has 
to  tell  to  them  whose  ears  are  attuned  to 
hear.  If  righteousness  be  assailed  on  so 
vast  a  scale  that  the  whole  world  must  pause 
in  its  pursuits  to  give  attention,  the  world 
will  forbid.  Alliance  of  insuperable  might 
will  more  readily  be  formed  than  ever  before 
to  protect  international  justice. 


At  the  End  169 

For  Serbia,  it  will  mean  a  chance  to  learn 
and  to  share  in  a  higher  civilization  than 
was  ever  there  imagined.  That  dark  and 
passionate  child  will  have  such  friends  as 
never  before,  eager  to  help  and  to  lead  her 
upward  where  her  splendid  bravery  may  be 
devoted  to  higher  and  more  noble  aims. 

For  Italy,  it  will  mean  self-respect  and 
safety.  The  shadow  of  the  Vatican  will  no 
longer  lean  across  the  throne,  and  the  throne 
itself  must  be  but  the  emblem  of  the  will  of  a 
united  people.  Rome  will  again  be  Rome, 
but  not  the  legionary  Rome  of  the  Empire 
nor  the  superstitious  Rome  of  the  Dark 
Ages.  A  new  and  nobler  Rome  will  rise, 
proud  to  be  the  equal  among  other  great 
ones,  but  cured  of  the  mad  ambition  for  an 
impossible  headship  over  either  the  bodies 
or  the  souls  of  men. 

For  Russia,  it  will  mean  freedom  and 
greatness.  The  place  in  the  sun  will  be 
hers,  and  an  awakened  people,  liberated 
from  the  sodden  curse  of  the  tyranny  of 
drink  and  despotism,  will  develop  a  civiliza- 


170  At  the  End 

tion  as  noble  in  enlightenment  as  in  vast- 
ness  of  extent  and  mightiness  of  population. 
The  beauty  of  spirit  which  is  theirs  shall 
express  itself  in  noble  art  and  music  and 
poetry.  The  development  of  their  resources 
shall  pour  rich  cargoes  through  the  twin 
necks  of  the  Sea  of  Marmora  to  add  to  the 
wealth  of  the  world.  The  new  association 
in  finance  and  in  council  with  the  noble 
nations  of  the  West  shall  negative  the  Tartar 
danger  that  heretofore  has  lain  hidden  in 
the  Slav. 

For  Belgium,  it  will  mean  glory  everlasting. 
Sorrow  and  pride  hand  in  hand  will  weep 
and  smile  over  the  high  memories  of  her 
time  of  martyrdom.  Her  ruined  cities  and 
monuments  will  be  rebuilded,  cruder  in  art 
mayhap  than  before,  but  hallowed  by  a  new 
tradition  that  shall  make  them  an  inspiration 
and  a  solace.  And  battle  will  for  centuries 
avoid  that  land  which  has  for  centuries 
been  the  battleground  of  Europe.  Never 
again  shall  another  Waterloo  or  more  of  the 
greater  Waterloos  of  these  historic  days 


At  the  End  171 

enrich  her  soil  with  such  a  ghastly  tillage. 
And  the  name  of  Belgium  shall  be  a  beacon 
unto  men. 

For  Canada,  Australia,  New  Zealand, 
and  perhaps  even  for  India,  it  will  mean  that 
they  have  reached  man's  estate,  and  here- 
after shall  take  their  places  as  equals  in  the 
council  chamber. 

For  Great  Britain,  it  will  mean  a  new 
consecration.  The  old  bonds  of  caste  which 
have  bound  and  hampered  have  been  burst 
and  will  never  again  have  power  to  fetter. 
The  healthy  new  life  has  cleansed  her  blood  of 
much  impurity  that  had  she  continued  in  her 
sedentary  ways  might  have  broken  out  in 
well-nigh  fatal  ulcers.  The  old  toplofty 
and  sniffing  superiority  is  gone,  not  because 
she  is  not  finer  than  ever  before,  but  because 
as  never  before  she  has  learned  the  finenesses 
of  other  nations.  The  people  have  become 
one  in  purpose,  however  much  they  may 
bicker  about  methods,  and  the  great  selfish 
dangers  of  the  old  tyrannies  of  freedom, 
of  groups  asserting  their  own  rights  even 


At  the  End 


against  the  rights  of  others,  are  passing 
away.  Even  the  tyrannies  of  labor  and  the 
tyrannies  of  church  may  not  be  able  to  sur- 
vive this  war.  At  all  events,  there  will  be 
a  cleaner,  more  healthy  and  more  useful 
England,  less  haughty  perhaps  than  before, 
but  more  helpful  to  the  world. 

For  France,  for  noble,  heroic,  and  inspired 
France,  it  will  mean  the  pride  of  duty  done 
and  the  admiration  of  the  world.  Alsace 
and  Lorraine  will  be  restored,  and  although 
death  will  have  taken  heavy  toll  of  the 
manhood  of  the  land,  those  who  survive 
will  have  a  national  self-respect  which  will 
prove  of  incalculable  worth.  The  principles 
of  democratic  government  have  in  France 
more  than  in  any  other  land  justified  them- 
selves and  proved  that  they  are  the  basis  on 
which  the  happiness  and  the  peace  of  man- 
kind may  be  established.  The  Latin  blood 
as  it  lives  purified  in  France  will  have  proved 
itself  capable  of  higher  greatness  than  when 
it  ruled  the  ancient  world.  France,  we  salute 
thee. 


At  the  End  173 

For  Africa,  it  will  mean  development 
under  conditions  of  just  administration  never 
before  attainable.  Neither  in  the  Congo 
nor  the  Cameroons  will  the  old  barbarities 
ever  again  be  possible. 

For  Europe  as  a  whole,  it  will  mean  long 
years  of  labor,  of  privation,  of  sacrifice. 
But  Europe  is  learning  that  happiness  lies 
in  service  and  self-denial,  and  that  the  hearts 
of  men  are  greatened  by  the  inspiration  of  a 
noble  purpose  outside  of  the  petty  and  sel- 
fish ambitions  of  personal  advantage.  The 
graves  lie  thick  along  those  tragic  battle- 
lines,  the  halt  and  the  blind  must  look  for 
charity  to  the  lessened  store  of  those  who 
have  already  given,  given,  given;  but  every- 
where there  will  be  a  new  underlying  noble- 
ness. Here  and  there  some  fat  profiteer  of 
war  contracts  will  wallow  in  ignoble  wealth, 
but  the  mass  of  the  people  will  be  purified. 

For  the  United  States,  for  my  country, 
what  will  it  mean?  If  to  the  end  we  are 
content  to  stand  deaf  to  the  call  of  duty  and 
of  civilization,  to  be  willing  to  listen  to  the 


174  At  the  End 

inglorious  selfishness  of  an  unworthy  ad- 
ministration, to  sweat  profits  from  the  soul 
anguish  of  Europe,  we  shall  grow  gross  and 
paunchy,  and  the  splendid  ideals  of  the  early 
days  of  our  land  shall  become  nothing  but 
the  fairy  tales  of  childhood.  Who  has  not 
seen  some  glorious  and  visionary  youth,  un- 
able to  rise  superior  to  the  insistent  sordid- 
nesses  of  life,  gradually  degenerate  into 
successful  and  soulless  middle-age,  lost  to 
the  dreams  that  once  inspired  him?  Shall 
we  as  a  nation  thus  degenerate?  But  if 
before  the  end  of  this  huge  struggle  the  iron 
shall  enter  our  souls,  if  we  shall  learn  to  see 
broadly  and  sacrifice  for  the  cause  of  progress, 
we  shall  save  our  national  soul  and  keep 
our  place  at  the  forefront  of  the  powers  for 
good  in  the  evolution  of  mankind.  By 
worthy  war  the  unconnected  and  twisted 
filaments  of  our  population  may  be  beaten 
upon  the  anvil  into  a  homogeneous  and 
mighty  whole,  and  the  future  of  our  nation 
be  assured.  Nothing  can  so  unite  a  people 
as  the  spirit  of  service  which  is  quickening 


At  the  End  175 

the  souls  of  other  nations;  with  us  up  to 
this  time  it  has  been  entirely  lacking  as  a 
nation,  however  splendidly  it  may  have 
manifested  itself  in  individuals.  If  we  are 
not  to  be  a  drag  on  civilization,  we  must 
serve  civilization.  Think,  think,  think,  my 
countrymen,  and  arouse  yourselves  to  com- 
pel nobility  of  action.  You  have  looked 
in  vain  to  Washington  for  inspiration;  now 
let  your  voices  swell  in  such  a  mighty  chorus 
that  Washington  must  of  necessity  give 
ear  and  obey.  So  shall  you  serve  your 
country  and  your  world,  and  bring  to  ac- 
complishment the  high  destiny  of  our  land 
and  the  traditions  of  duty  which  we  have 
inherited  hitherto  uncankered  and  unstained. 


THE  TWO  NATIONS 
Mukden,   1905 

THEY  have  snatched  us  from  the  village,  they 

have  swept  us  from  the  farm, 
They  have  herded  us  like  cattle  in  their  trains, 
They  have  freighted  us  afar  to  a  blind  and  hope- 
less war, 
And  Death  the  only  surcease  from  our  pains. 

Dark,  dark,  dark  the  years  behind  us, 

Dark,  darky  dark  the  years  ahead, 
And  our  only  hope  of  winning  is  to  fail  from  the 
beginning, 

And  we  serve  our  country  only  being  dead. 

We  are  driven  to  the  trenches,  we  are  garnered 

to  the  field, 
We  are  gathered  to  the  slaughter-pen  like 

sheep, 
When  the  pickaxe-toil  is  done  we  are_bonded  to 

the  gun, 
And  we  shoot  and  shovel  even  in  our  sleep. 

They  have  robbed  us  of  our  clothing,  they  have 
robbed  us  of  our  bread, 
176 


The  Two  Nations  177 

They  have  robbed  the  very  powder  from  our 

shells; 
If  the  rouble  fats  their  purse  they  dismiss  us 

with  a  curse 
To  the  fevers  and  the  famines  of  their  hells. 

Their  strumpets   draw  their  skirts  aside  lest 

passing  we  pollute, 

Their  drunken  servants  lash  us  as  we  go, 
They  gamble  through  the  night  with  the  profit 

on  our  plight, — 
An  hundred  murdered  men  upon  each  throw. 

They  heed  not  of  disaster,  they  reck,"  not  of 

defeat, 
While  through  their  hands  the  clinging  treasure 

flows; 
The  contractor  rules  the  throne  and  Greed  is 

God  alone, 

The  Greed  that  sweats  its  harvest  from  our 
woes. 

We   are   numbers,    we   are   chattels,    counting 

nothing,  incidental, 
We  are  worthless  discards  in  the  game  they 

play; 
They  harry  us  about  with  the  bludgeon  and  the 

knout, 

And   beneath   those   searching   teachers  we 
obey. 


1 78  The  Two  Nations 

We  are  maimed  and  we  are  wounded,  we  are  torn 

and  gashed  and  rent, 
We  die  of  black  neglect  and  foul  disease, 
Splintered  steel  and  rifle-rain,  and  the  mine- 
uprooted  plain 

Where  the  griping  wire-strand  drags  us  to 
our  knees. 

All  unburied  lie  our  corpses  till    the  sun  has 

wrought   his  vengeance 
And  the  living  breathe  the  curses  of  the  slain, 
Till  infection  and  disaster  fall  upon  us  fast  and 

faster, 
And  unutterable  torments  craze  the  brain. 

Land  that  bore  us !    We  who  love  thee  can  but 

pray  annihilation 

For  thy  armies  and  thy  navies  and  thy  forts ; 
In  the  foeman's  hand  the  knife  that  can  win  thee 

back  to  life, 
And  cleanse  thee  of  the  cancer  of  thy  courts. 

By  the  dead  that  died  before  us,  by  the  deaths 

that  we  must  meet, 

By  thy  armies  routed  and  thy  battles  lost, 
By  the  pains  of  thy  defeat,  by  the  miles  of  thy 

retreat, 
By  thy  broken  pledges  and  thy  wasted  cost, 

By  thy  navies  sunk  and  shattered,  by  thy  blasted 

hopes  and  plans, 
By  thy  futile  toil  and  thy  unnumbered  slain, 


The  Two  Nations  179 

By  the  foulness  of  thy  shame,  by  the  blots  upon 

thy  name, 

Thou  shalt  come  perchance  unto  thine  own 
again. 

We  the  blinded  shall  discern,  we  the  trodden 

shall  uprear, 

We  the  branded  cattle  shall  at  last  arise; 
With  the  passing  of  our  night  we  shall  recognize 

»  our  might, 
Any  dynasties  shall  be  the  sacrifice. 

Who  robbed  and  drove  and  knouted  shall  be 

knouted  in  their  turn, — 
Behold  us  drag  the  drunkards  out  to  die,  — 
And  the  land  shall  run  with  blood  like  a  river 

at  its  flood, 
And  cities  vanish  to  the  flaming  sky. 

Dark,  dark,  dark  the  years  behind  us, 
But  a  glint  of  light  is  sparking  from  the  East, 

We  have  failed  from  the  beginning,  and  we  see  our 

hope  of  winning, 
In  the  wheeling  vultures  gathered  to  their  feast. 

This  shall  rouse  us,  this  shall  wake  us,  this  shall 

teach  us  we  are  men, 

This  shall  make  our  lot  too  bitter  hard  to  bear, 
By  the  horrors  of  the  strife  this  shall  galvanize 

to  life, 
This  shall  goad  us  into  action  from  despair. 


i8o  The  Two  Nations 

Then  shall  rise  a  ransomed  nation,  like  a  phoenix 

from  our  ashes, 
From  the  filth   and   degradation  where  we 

move, — 
Good  from  Evil,  Rest  from  Pain,  Peace  and 

Truth  and  Law  again, 
And  a  Fatherland  that  honest  men  can  love. 


Port  Arthur,  1905 

OTHER  this  strife  to  which  we  go  than  when  our 

Fathers  strove, 

Not  now  the  sword  two-handed  falls  on  bat- 
tered blade  and  shield, 
Not  now  in  serried  ranks  close-pressed  the  tufted 

bowmen  move, 

Or  deeds  of  single  prowess  serve  to  win  or  lose 
the  field. 

Not  now  the  knotted  muscle  swells  to  speed  the 

driven  blow, 
But  spiraled  tube  and  choking    fume  and 

spurts  of  tawny  flame; 
Mile-off  the  stinging  bullet  flies  to  search  the 

hidden  foe 

Who  meets  the  Messenger  of  Death  but  knows 
not  whence  he  came. 

But  still  the  blade  our  Fathers  bore  in  their 
triumphant  age, 


The  Two  Nations  181 

Hand-wrought  with   prayer  and   sacrifice   and 

damascened  with  gold, 
Stands  as  the  sacred  symbol  of    our    holiest 

heritage, 
The  Spirit  of  our  Ancestors,  eternal  as  of  old. 

The  land  they  loved  and  died  to  save  to-day  is 

ours  to  save, 
Brave  Fuji  rises  from  his  plain  to  look  upon 

the  sea; 
Still  stately  Nantai  towers  above  Chuzenji's 

dappled  wave, 

And  battlemented  by  her  cliffs  lies  rock-bound 
Atatni. 

As  fair  by  old  Kioto's  town  the  cherry-blossoms 

blow 
When  Spring  has  stooped  and  kissed    their 

buds  and  whispered  of  her  love, 
On  Biwa's  lake  the  lilies  sleep,  and   still  our 

pilgrims  go 

To  pray  by  Nikko's  sparkling  stream  and 
shrine-crowned  hills  above. 

For  these  we  dare  the  battle's  din  and  meet  the 

biting  death, 
And  hold  our  lives  well  given  where  we  have 

not  died  in  vain; 
For  these  we  scale  the  bristling  height  and  charge 

the  cannon's  breath, 


1 82  The  Two  Nations 

And  leap  against  the  bayonet  and  stagger  o'er 
the  slain. 

We  seek  the  wisdom  of  the  West  and  turn  it  to 

our  weal, 
We  search  the  page  of  Science  and  we  bid  her 

serve  our  needs; 
Afar  we  hurl  the  shrieking  shell  and  spray  the 

riven  steel, 

Or  set  the  path  of  ruin  where  our  blind  torpedo 
speeds. 

Our  searchlights  stab  the  heart  of  night  and  mock 

the  gathered  gloom, 

Lords  of  the  narrow  ocean  where  our  throb- 
bing ships  patrol, 
Who  dares  the  passage  of  our  straits  untimely 

seeks  his  doom 

Where  sentried    by  our    guardian  guns  our 
loaded  transports  roll. 

Planned,   ruled,    coordinate,    exact,    prepared, 

foreseen,  foretold, 
The  cosmos  of  our  ordering  goes  sure  to  its 

success, — 
Half  of  a  million  eager  men,  obedient,  trained, 

controlled, 

Patient  to  live  or  swift  to  die  as  suits  their 
usefulness. 

At  need  we  spend  ten  thousand  lives  and  count 
the  cost  well  paid 


The  Two  Nations  183 

To  gain  a  reef  of  barren  rock  that  bars  our 

chosen  way; 
We  ask  the  boon  of  certain  death,  and  meet  it 

undismayed, 
Exchanging  years  unhonored  for  the  glory  of 

a  day. 

We  hark  unflinching  to  the  call  that  bids  us  do 

and  die 
To  aid  our  country's  straight  advance  along 

her  destined  road; 
Comes  to  our  ears  from  far-off  years  our  Fathers' 

battle-cry, 

The  Lesson  of  our  History,  the  Honor  of  our 
Code. 


Petrograd,  1916 

EAGER  we  hark  the  call  that  starts  us  on  our  way, 
Our  steps  may  lead  to  death,  but  what  care  we, 

The  purifying  flame  is  cleansing  us  to-day, 
We  die,  we  die,  and  Russia  shall  be  free. 

Courage  we  always  had;  vision  to-day  is  ours, 
Now  first  we  comprehend  our  noble  fate; 

The  poisoned  sleep  is  gone  that  robbed  us  of  our 

powers, 
We  have  awakened.     It  is  not  too  late. 


184  The  Two  Nations 

In  deep  reverberations  tramp  our  forward  feet, 

Million  on  serried  million  to  our  day, 
Down  from  the  snowy  peaks  where  East  and 

Europe  meet, 

Back  from  those  edgeless  steppes  that  rim 
Cathay, 

From  Caspian's  wave-ribbed  shore,  from  Cau- 
casus the  old, 

From  Volga's  rolling  flood  and  Neva's  strand, 
From  palace,  hut,  and  ghetto,  hot  South  and 

Northern  cold, 
We  come  to  the  redemption  of  our  land. 

Know  ye  our  song  to-day,  know  ye  our  wilful 

men? 

Listen  and  ye  shall  hear  our  dirge  of  death, 
Our  hymn,  our  nation's  heart,  throbbing  again, 

again, 
Thunderous,  thrilling,  true,  our  shibboleth: 

We  have  watered  our  fields  with  our  blood,  our 

bodies  have  fertiled  our  soil, 
We  have  died  for  our  hope  and  our  faith,  we  have 

given  ourselves  to  our  world, 
We  have  suffered  and  groaned  in  our  pain,  our 

anguish  has  riven  the  air, 
But  yet  we  were  able  to  die,  we  died  and  our 

country  shall  live. 


The  Two  Nations  185 

Silly   the  outcry  we  made  against  men  who  may 

strut  but  an  hour, 
Our  Czar  and  the  priests  of  his  train,  and  the  rob- 

bers  who  stole  at  our  cost, 
We  have  seen  the  white  light  of  a  knowledge  that  is 

blinding  our  eyes  with  its  truth, 
We  know  that  our  hope  is  ourselves,  and  we  died, 

God  be  praised,  we  have  died. 
The  soul  of  our  country  is  quick,  we  have  given  our 

country  our  faith, 
And  the  eyes  we  have  opened  have  seen  as  never 

before  could  we  see, 
In  our  deaths  we  have  learned  how  to  see,  by  our 

deaths  we  have  quickened  our  kind, 
And  the  soul  of  our  country  shall  live,  and  the 

pains  of  its  birth  be  forgot. 
Stubbornly,    stolidly,    slow,    we    have    given   the 

ground  that  is  ours, 
The  corruption  whose  name  is  Berlin  has  driven 

us,  driven  us  back, 
Across  the  red  marches  of  Poland,  among  the  red 

marshes  of  Pinsk, 
We  have  died,  we  have  staggered  and  fallen,  we 

have  died,  and  in  dying  we  live. 
The  pollution  whose  name  is  Berlin  we  have 

cleansed  from  our  hearts  and  our  homes, 
We  have  looked  on  the  splendor  of  God,  and  have 

found  that  He  is  but  ourselves, 
We  Moujiks,  we  Cossacks  are  God,  in  our  filth  and 

our  lusts  we  are  God, 


i86  The  Two  Nations 

We  are  giving  our  God  to  our  nation,  our  God  we 

shall  give  to  our  world. 
Back  from  the  marshes  of  Pinsk,  back  o'er  the 

marches  of  Poland, 
The  Hun  shall  be  driven  by  us,  we  shall  die,  God  be 

praised,  we  shall  die, 
And  dying  forever  shall  end  that  blasphemy  known 

as  Berlin, 
That  corruption  too  foul  to  endure  in  the  presence 

of  us  who  are  God. 
And  the  centuries  that  shall  succeed  shall  canonize 

us  who  are  God. 

Fast  has  our  life-blood  flowed,  our  rivers  know 
its  stain, 

The  Vistula  ran  red  where  we  have  died, 
The  waters  of  its  flood  shall  run  full  red  again 

When  we  again  shall  perish  by  its  side. 

Back-driven,  weary,  torn,  through  leagues   of 

slow  defeat, 

On  ever  East,  sullenly  giving  ground, 
Half-armed,  leaving  our  dead  to  be  the  vultures, 

meat, 
We  found  our  nation's  soul,  our  soul  we  found. 

That  dire  retreat  is  done,  now  stand  we  firm  at 

last, 

Soon  Westward,  ever  West,  our  steps  shall 
go, 


The  Two  Nations  187 

Back  o'er  the  blackened  land,  back,  for  the  die 

is  cast. 
Soon  we  shall  earn  the  wages  of  our  woe. 

What  if  a  million  die  ere  our  high  cause  is  won, 
Another  million  waits  its  turn  to  die ; 

No  power  can  stay  our  course  till  our  resolve  be 

done, 
Till  we  have  won  our  immortality. 

Not  for  ourselves  we  perish,  not  for  our  Czar  or 

State, 

But  for  our  children's  children  that  shall  be, 
Our  eyes  have  seen  the  light,  and  it  is  not  too 

late, 
We  die,  we  die,  and  Russia  shall  be  free. 


Tokio,  1916 

WHERE  Fugi  looks  clear-eyed  upon  his  sea, 
Where  Nantai  towers  above  Chuzenji's  wave, 

Calm-souled  we  scan  our  changing  history, 
Counting  the  worths  our  new-born  knowledge 
gave. 

Myth,  legend,  story,  all  have  passed  away, 
Ronin  and  daimio,  stately  samurai, 

That  yesterday  were  living  are  to-day 

Faint  perfumed  hauntings,  films  of  minstrelsy. 


i88  The  Two  Nations 

To-day  the  linked  eccentrics  in  our  hulls, 

The  whirling  screw  that  drives  them  on  their 
path, 

The  stop-watch  on  the  molten  steel  that  dulls 
Into  the  tempered  gun  that  hurls  our  wrath, 

Our  mixing  vats  of  that  Titanic  power 
Where  the  locked  gases  wait  the  fulminate 

To  loose  them  on  their  errand  at  the  hour 
When  we  shall  guide  the  doubting  steps  of 
fate, 

These  are  our  gods,  these  the  important  cares 
That  by  our  will  shall  steer  us  on  our  course, 

These  are  the  inspiration  that  prepares 

For  that  far  time  when  mind  shall  conquer 
force. 

Those  we  have  fought  from  our  great  strife  have 

learned, 
We  too  have  learned  from    our    successful 

strife, 
We  spurn  the  things  once  we  should  not  have 

spurned, 
Clearer  we  see  the  purposes  of  life. 

We  roused  the  soul  of  Russia  from  its  sleep, 
Russia  has  showed  to  us  a  nation's  soul ; 

As  to  the  voice  of  deep  that  calls  to  deep 
We  answer,  and  we  too  shall  gain  our  goal. 


The  Two  Nations  189 

Now  side  by  side  where  face  to  face  we  stood 
We  wait  the  futile  thunders  that  are  hurled 

To  prove  that  all  in  vain  is  splashing  blood 
To  make  or  mar  the  oneness  of  the  world. 

One  meaning  reached  our  clouded  vision  then 
Ere  the  new  light  of  this  great  hour  began, 

Then,  then  we  learned  how  wonderful  are  men, 
Now,  now  we  know  how  more  supreme  is  man. 


359* 


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